


Lie to Me

by LelithSugar



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: "plot", ...for what it's worth, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Civilians, Casual Sex, Cheating, Cuckolding, Drama & Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, Infidelity, Light Angst, M/M, Porn With Plot, Romance, Sexual Tension, Smut, Sort Of, charlie/eggsy is mostly off-camera fyi, endgame hartwin, in which nobody is a perfect gentleman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:24:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16237808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LelithSugar/pseuds/LelithSugar
Summary: Harry Hart is magnanimous enough to allow his ex-wife's son to stay with him for the summer, so when it all seems to be going far better than expected, he gathers that's his divine repayment.Then Charlie brings his boyfriend home, and Harry is reminded that no good deed goes unpunished.[Now completed, so those afraid of WIPs can dive on in!]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A short chapter to get us started, and it's been re-written about six times... goodness, I'd forgotten what a ball ache trying to wrangle a plot is. I can guarantee you it will be posted in its entirety this side of Christmas but any strict posting schedule wouldn't be worth the time I spent typing it, so I will instead implore you to subscribe if you might be interested. I'm expecting chapter two to be up within a week, and it'll earn that E rating there, don't you worry.
> 
> Thank you to Thisbirdhadflown who inadvertently gave me the idea for this on Tumblr.

Lie to Me

 

I.

That Harry’s response to the notification of an email from his ex wife is _ I wonder what she wants _ is perhaps not as uncharitable as it feels. In the twenty-odd years since their divorce they’ve largely fostered a relationship of sarcastic social commentary, mutual support and bitching - in as far as the last category isn’t covered by the preceding two - but it tends to just flow with the drinks on the sporadic occasions that they’re in the same country. An email is far more to the point and this far along the line there’s little sugarcoating required when she needs a favour. 

Harry perches on the arm of the sofa to give the email the attention that its appearance - and his not having his glasses on - warrant. Phillipa’s favours from Harry tend to be the practical sort, these days: using his connections to skip waiting lists all over London; keeping David - her third husband and by far Harry’s favourite to date - in excellent suits, and recommendations, because Harry still understands her valuing a cheeseboard over any and all possible iterations of dessert the way nobody else has managed yet, and couldn’t agree more if he tried. 

_ [...I’ll skip the small talk as I presume had you carelessly misplaced any more body parts, eloped with an underwear model, decided to pursue a career in Interior Design or jacked it all in to live in the Bahamas you’d have had the decency to email me first. Likewise, believe me. All is well and normal in sunny Gruyeres; the tits and arse business is as steady as ever. Positively perky, if you will.] _

He will  _ not _ . 

_ [The thrust then - would Charlie be able to stay with you whilst he does this bloody ‘internship’ at London and Capital?...] _

He snorts at her obvious scepticism. It’s not like she doesn’t know her son has been gifted many aspects of life on a silver platter, and is likely to continue to do so, by dint of who his father is. They’re lucky in that respect: if he’d been Harry’s, the most he would have been graced with by reputation and inheritance is an effectively infinite wardrobe and an eclectic but well-curated collection of taxidermy which would have the dual benefit of enduring his mother never visits. She’s not phobic, she just can’t abide Harry’s taste. 

_ [I know you value your privacy - for which read ‘are a miserable old git these days’ - but he’ll come adequately supplied and funded and with access to credit if he needs it,” ] -  _ Well, that’s two thirds of the problem right there, in Harry’s book. - [“ _ so you’ll not need to provide anything more than the basic lodgings. He’ll look after himself; he’s got friends in the area… _ ”] 

None who like him enough to put him up for twelve weeks though, Harry notes a little sharply, skimming through the rest of the email with the distinct feeling he’s lost an argument that hasn’t even started. He could already do with a scotch.

Harry doesn’t want Charles Hesketh-Wilmott to come and stay with him first and foremost because he doesn’t want  _ anybody _ to come and stay with him. He’s lived alone all these years for a bloody good reason: he likes being alone; to the extent that when his beloved Cairn terrier, Mr Pickle, finally kicked the bucket he had him stuffed and maintained his acquaintance with him rather than replace him, and he could do without anybody witnessing  that  particular quirk, thank you. 

He also doesn’t want Charles Hesketh-Willmott to come and stay with him because, if Harry’s honest, Phillipa’s son would appear very very low down on the list of people he’d host out of choice. Harry doesn’t resent Charlie for his conception in their second year of marriage because ultimately it was the catalyst in the ensuing amicable divorce that freed Harry to live his own truth and he’s been far happier for it.

He resents Charlie because he’s a bit of a prick. Favours his father, both in looks and personality and in the sense that he has a tendency to go running to daddy when anything doesn’t go his way. Philippa is not entirely blameless: it’s her sharpness Charlie has inherited, if none of her grace, and whilst Harry hadn’t resented her, either, for being susceptible to the far more abundant affections of a Swiss banker - crucially one who was actually interested in women -  she was solely responsible for the seventeenth birthday Mercedes which hadn’t done anything for the boy’s sense of entitlement. Harry remembers him as the exact sort of self-important knob he hated at boarding school, hates so much as queuing for coffee behind these days, let alone sharing his living space with. Three months. Three months is an  _ eternity  _ to someone used to being beholden only to work and the use-by date of their semi skimmed.

It’s a nightmare waiting to happen for more reasons than Harry feels like analysing at that moment, particularly when he’s already tapping his response, stiltedly because his muscle memory is not yet as attuned to his predictive text as to conceding ground, Phillipa’s negotiation skills always having had the bearing of a heavily armoured tank. He doesn’t even bother typing out his concerns because he knows she’ll have the rebuttals and reassurances prepared for every eventuality:  there is of course every chance it will be fine, that university has mellowed Charlie into a fine young man and that the summer’s arrangement will as promised mean little disruption to his day to day life. 

Harry believes that like he believes in the tooth fairy. 

Ultimately he agrees purely for want of a defensible excuse not to, but then, he knew that decision was made as soon as he opened the email. 

“It looks like we’re having a house guest,” He remarks quasi-cheerfully to Mr Pickle, who - stuffed, glazed and staring into the unknown void - looks exactly how Harry feels about it all. 

X.

 

Charlie arrives in a taxicab and a linen Ralph Lauren blazer which clearly telegraphs his intention not to do any lifting of his luggage himself, but he tips the driver who lugs his matching set of Burberry cases up Harry’s front steps decently without prompting so renewed first impressions are, at worst, neutral. Having confused himself about it for a good hour - or if he’s honest, the best part of a week -  Harry finds that the most instinctive greeting is to pull the boy into a hug. 

Uncharacteristic and remarkably unBritish spontaneous displays of affection done with, they fall back to more familiar pleasantries standing in the doorway: of course Harry looks well, of course Charlie’s studies are going splendidly, and it’s so kind of Harry to let him stay whilst he makes his first forays into the world of actually working for a living... for all that’s worth at the level he will go in at. Not that Harry is really in any position from which to judge, he knows, given that he was allowed to reclaim his place near the top of the family tailors’ despite his extended gap year travelling around war zones taking shrapnel to the face. We’re all to play the hands we are dealt, he accepts that, and Charlie doesn’t seem quite as abrasive with his privilege as Harry remembers. 

True to his mother’s word Charlie does indeed come prepared with everything he needs to settle in - including a rather pricey bottle of whisky for his host - and does so without looking down his aristocratically straight nose at Harry, making any outlandishly spoiled demands or in fact requiring anything much from Harry at all. Harry feels simultaneously chagrin and like a spare part in the whole process.  

He pings Pippa an email - from his computer rather than his phone so that he can focus the appropriate amount of wit - to tell her that Charlie has arrived safely and mentally chastises himself for wanting to ask whether she’s ventured into body/personality transplants, because responding to Charlie’s unexpected geniality with rudeness is still just about beneath him.  

Having prepared himself for passive-aggressive battle, though, it’s all something of an anticlimax. It’s a compliment, Harry supposes, to his hosting that Charlie troubles him for little he hasn’t already set out or pointed him in the direction of other than the WiFi code; he doesn’t really see much of him in the first few days other than in passing, at which times he is always effusively well mannered. He’s out a great deal even in the evenings after work, Harry only encounters him coming or going with friends in expensive cars and when he’s in he’s on the phone, like a businessman from a 1980s film, his strident boarding school laugh echoing through Harry’s otherwise muted house.  He’s considerate - or snobby, Harry suspects but gives him the benefit of the doubt - not to invite any parties back to Harry’s, though on Saturday afternoon he does happen across him ushering in a young man in sportswear who leaves garish, blinding white trainers with little wings on them by the back door and looks remarkably guilty when they don’t manage to sneak by without being spotted. 

Harry gives himself a firm telling off for being surprised, because although the lad’s not exactly what he’d have pegged as Charlie’s type it does confirm his assumptions, and when he politely takes off his cap he’s actually rather stunning -  all angular jaw and wide green eyes - so Harry can absolutely forgive the dress sense. 

Charlie looks a bit put out and having to make the introduction, but that’s quite what he gets for trying to smuggle a dalliance into Harry’s house in broad daylight. Honestly. Does he think Harry was never young?  _ Probably.  _

“This is Gary.”

The young man puts his hand out to shake, and of course Harry takes it. He tamps down on the urge to raise it and kiss the back of it instead. There’s a considerable chance his dinner is burning but Harry can stomach overcooked pasta for the sake of a little entertainment in his evening: there is no way he’s about to let Charlie wriggle off this hook quite so easily now he’s caught, and a few more minutes to look at the boy he’s brought home will just be a happy coincidence.

“Eggsy, if you ain’t a prick about it.”  Those bewitching green eyes gleam as he allows Harry a wary half-smile, and Charlie cuts in with an impatient bark of a laugh, having barely paused to hang his jacket up and leave his loafers by the foot of the stairs. Harry fantasizes a couple of seconds of wild, bloody violence because he’s reminded him of the shoe mat at least once a day since he arrived.

“I’m just saying, that’s not even a name.”

“Whatevs, yeah,  _ Charles?” _

“Harry Hart.” Harry interjects quickly, shaking Gary-or-Eggsy’s hand because he realises he hasn’t let go of it yet.  “I’m - I was married to Charlie’s mother.”

Eggsy raises his sharp eyebrows - good grief, his entire face is chiseled beauty  - in silent challenge of the concept of Harry being married to a woman at any point, which Harry acknowledges with a minute shrug. 

“But you ain’t his dad.”

“I am not.” 

Eggsy nods, and there’s none of the judgement Harry’s accustomed to feeling when that particular snippet of information occurs to people, and he’s strangely grateful for that. He’s not impressed with himself for assuming from the tracksuit and the accent that he might be from a set a little more accustomed to broken homes, but Harry finds himself assuming it nonetheless.

“How long ago was you and his mum married?”  His face says there’s a reason he asked: he’s attempting to do the maths and Harry is not about to sugarcoat it for any of them. 

“Twenty three years.”

“Gotcha. Well, nice of you to let him stay. Lovely place you’ve got.”

Harry’s about to say something… to keep the conversation going, or excuse himself, but for all he wants to he seems rooted to the spot by more than this cannelloni waiting in the oven. Eggsy seems the same, standing in his socks looking at Harry like he’s trying to work something out: Harry himself, perhaps, or what to say, but they’re spared that because Charlie calls him from the staircase.

“Oi. Are you coming?”

Eggsy winks at Harry, undercut with a quick tick of his tongue, and follows.

Harry stands in the doorway to the kitchen with the distinct sensation that his brain has just come out of a tumble dryer: warm and shaken. Though he had no particular plans for his evening, having a gorgeous young man with a cheeky smile and what looked like a model’s physique suddenly materialise in his house was certainly not on the schedule, and if he’d happened to daydream it, having him disappear just as quickly upstairs with someone else even less so. Being confronted with unavoidable awareness of his guest’s love life before they’ve even had a conversation about it is awkward, too, and something about the way Charlie had beckoned him - like a dog - was distinctly uncomfortable.

Harry knows, then, that he’s looking for fault, looking for something to assuage the guilt that’s pricking at him because that wink has gone through him like a hot poker through butter, like a brand on his very soul.

 


	2. Chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yeah that chapter count went up. I'd been in two minds about one of my scenes but I've decided it's going in. But here we are on two, and smut already. Don't pretend you're surprised!

II

As much as it makes Harry jump, the knock on the door itself isn’t a surprise.  What is perhaps surprising is that Harry has worked himself into such a state about having to entertain a stranger - and an attractive one, to boot - for an unspecified amount of time that he’s poured crisps out into decorative little bowls and stress-eaten the remainder of the bag along with a glass of wine. But then, perhaps not. 

It’ll be Eggsy. Eggsy, who has cropped up seemingly at random throughout the week, like a mirage: one minute he’s smoking on the doorstep, the next gone as though made of smoke himself; squeezing past Harry in the corridor and calling Harry  _ love _ like he’s a barmaid or something and yet nowhere to be found in the mornings or at meal times or at any time Harry reasonably expects. He finds he doesn’t mind.

Charlie had asked Harry whether he would mind letting Eggsy in if he happened to arrive before Charlie himself got home, and Harry had been so entirely flummoxed by the request that he hadn’t had time to cook up a reasonable excuse to decline.  _ Straight out of his mother’s textbook _ . Phillippa would be proud. He had hoped Charlie might be back earlier than anticipated and save him the trouble, had even floated the suggestion that he might have Eggsy meet him from or even at his dinner out but that didn’t go over well at all: Charlie had looked at Harry as though he’d sprouted tentacles and tactfully suggested that his friends weren’t the sort of people you could introduce someone like Eggsy to, even after a few drinks. 

Harry wasn’t really sure what to make of that, and still doesn’t understand it. In the few moments they’d spent together Harry had found Eggsy utterly - disconcertingly - charming  , and he’s trying not to give much thought to whether that’s been instrumental in his choice to wear his glasses rather than his eyepatch this evening; to change into a well-fitting pale blue shirt and leave the neck open rather than resigning to anything less presentable. He’s just not used to having people come to his house, let alone stay in it and absolutely never in this supremely awkward social purgatory in which nobody is quite acknowledging what’s going on.  Still, there’s little room for ambiguity to a meeting at this late hour of the evening.

"Eggsy.” His smile is genuine, and Eggsy’s returning one is earnest and sudden. Harry ushers  him inside with no more than a step backwards and a tilt of his shoulder and Eggsy accepts the invitation, considerately if sloppily toeing off his shoes in the hallway and following Harry back into the living room.

“Charlie not home yet, nah?”

“I’m afraid not.” Harry is in fact not disappointed at all for his own sake but can imagine for a young man summoned over to keep his lover’s company after an evening of martinis and promises, having to make smalltalk with his greying, one-eyed quasi-stepfather might be something of a downer on the mood. Still, Eggsy doesn’t seem to mind. Harry picks up his wine glass as he passes it on the coffee table, vaguely heading in the direction of those crisps because when all else fails, food and alcohol are surely safe territory.  “Can I offer you a glass of this not terribly exciting Malbec?”

Eggsy laughs, which makes his Adam’s apple stand out and his cheeks dimple, and makes Harry acutely aware of the wine he’s already had flushing his face, weighting his legs. Definitely the wine. Harry simply does not go weak at the knees for working class lads half his age.

“Well, seeings as you’ve done it such a bang-up sales job, be rude not to.” He sniffs and plonks himself, there is simply no other word for it, into Harry’s armchair, shifting his gaze about like he expects to be told to move. Or, less kindly, like he’s looking for something that will fit in his pockets... but that’s Charlie’s snobbish appraisal, or Harry’s father's, and Harry gives it no further room. “Don’t know nothing about wine though so if this is some hundred quid a bottle shit don’t go wasting it on me.”

Harry pours the second glass and passes it to him _ ,  _ unable to help the quick, appreciative scan over his body: tightish jeans and a polo shirt do far more for Eggsy’s physique than the loose sports gear he’s seen him in to date. 

_"_ I don’t feel that would be a waste at all, but if it puts your mind at rest I am happy to assure you this came from Sainsburys.” 

Should he have said that? Not the Sainsbury’s bit, obviously, that’s every word the truth, but then so was the other part and now it’s out there Harry feels as though he might have overstepped a mark. Eggsy doesn’t acknowledge it, if he even noticed: he’s too busy sniffing suspiciously at his wine glass, with the demeanour not of a sommelier but of one who has swigged first and regretted it later one too many times.  At length he takes a sip,and looks surprised.

“Oh actually it’s nice! I was expecting it to taste like cat’s piss and I was gonna pretend I liked it anyway, but this is good!”  _ Bless him.  _ It isn’t bad, in fact, and if it was any more interesting he’d be wincing at the way Eggsy gulps it. “What was it? I’ll have to pick my mum some up, she’ll think I’ve gone all posh just ‘cos I -” He trails off, perhaps a little uncomfortably and Harry spares him the end of the sentence by holding out the bottle for him to read the label, and he takes a picture of it on his phone.  They’re quiet for a little while, then, other than Eggsy babbling apologetically about his journey over and Harry musing on the benefits of being walking distance from work when he isn’t being lazy. They make enough progress on their glasses of wine that Harry can top them both up - that’s the end of that bottle - and without any indication as to whether Charlie might be minutes away or another half an hour, Harry sits down.

“What happened?” Eggsy swallows his mouthful of off-brand Kettle Chips and gestures vaguely with his glass in Harry’s direction.  “To your eye?”

Harry finds that brave rather than rude: perhaps its an indication of a soft spot for present company but it’s not as though anybody can be believed not to have noticed that his left eye is always covered and thus infer that it’s missing, and he offers the same candour he always has for those bold enough to be frank. 

“I did a stint in the special forces. Chechnya happened to most of me, in fact, but my eye came off worst. Rather put me out of action, hence the career change.”

Eggsy nods, looking around the living room as though it illustrates Harry as a tailor somehow, even though the majority of his decor has nothing to do with his trade. Does Eggsy even know what he does, now? Harry can’t imagine he’s top of the list of conversation topics when charlie and Eggsy get together - from what he’s overheard of their meetings  he can’t imagine conversation is high on the list at all - but the moment has passed to fill in any gaps. It feels to intimate, suddenly, the spread of interests and experiences and fondnesses on the walls laying him bare, pinning him out like one of his framed butterflies. 

“My dad was in the marines.”

“And what does he do now?”

Eggsy snorts. “Nothin’. He didn’t make it back.”

_Ouch._  Harry should have known better than to dive in around a topic like that. Would have known better, if he weren’t entirely too absorbed in mapping the handsome cut of Eggsy’s jaw, the strong lines of his throat and his bare forearms as he toys thoughtfully with the stem of his wineglass. 

“I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I don’t doubt your father was a fine man and I have all the admiration in the world for their work. ” It comes out a little rote, which he’s sorry for but he doesn’t say so lest he fall into the bottomless mire of apologising for apologies that he so often stumbles on when he’s out of his comfort zone. He resists asking how old Eggsy was at the time too, because he gathers it’s not such a recent loss, but that doesn’t stop him feeling insensitive.

“Thanks. I was training up myself but then my mum lost her shit. Wanted me home, you know?”

“Well, that’s hardly surprising.” On either count. He’s sympathetic for a poor single mother not wanting to lose her son the same way she lost her husband, yes, but mostly what Harry finds he means is that somewhere in the back of his mind he’d already pegged Eggsy as an excellent military prospect: there’s something about his mannerisms, his build, the efficiency of his movement that Harry can just see being whipped into perfect shape with the right training. The Forces’ loss is his family and friends’ gain though: Charlie’s gain, though Harry wonders if he appreciates that. Harry’s gain, for these warm moments of relatively innocent admiration. There’s no harm in looking, after all. “And now?”

“Bit of labouring when I can get it. Was on a roof build but the weather…” He turns his nose up in the direction of the window though it’s completely dark out, just flecks of rain glowing in the orange light of the street lamp,  and Harry doesn’t know a great deal about masonry but he gathers the fortnight of perpetual drizzle they’ve been subjected to is ideal conditions for very little. The momentary image of Eggsy getting caught in a downpour in a threadbare work shirt is extremely distracting, and Harry goes to finish his wine but finds he’s already drained the glass.  “Got a mate who works at the garage though so I’m gonna down tomorrow, see if they’ve got enough on to keep me out of trouble for a bit.”

That’s a pleasant thought too. Part of it is neat respect: Harry doesn’t hold any truck with the notion that manual labour has any less intrinsic value than the academic and he admires someone who can turn their hand to more than one trade, can apply themselves to wherever their graft is needed.  And he’s not pretending the other part isn’t a less intellectual, half remembered appreciation for a workman’s strength - for rough hands and functional form - and having watched far too much pornography with the ubiquitous labourer coming in to tinker with the hardware and perhaps knocking off the lonely ageing bachelor whilst he’s there. 

Harry feels his face warming and hopes that a blush isn’t visible under the shadow of his glasses. When he risks a look, Eggsy is sprawled in his armchair, legs spread lazily enough to stretch the fabric of his jeans tight across his lap and Harry absolutely refuses to look for long enough to see what he can make out there. The  _ out of trouble _ resonates warmly as well, an invitation for Harry to imagine what Eggsy might be getting up to if not constructively occupied and there’s something there to the appeal of the bad boy, Harry supposes, although he gets the feeling Eggsy is the sort of person dogs and small children adore on sight and doesn’t have a truly bad bone in his body. 

...Just a bit rough around the edges, all the better to grip and grab at you a touch too hard, to promise you all sorts of filth littered with sloppy cursing and leave your mouth tasting of tobacco and chewing gum...

It’s a relief, then, when Harry hears a car door slam and the bounce of Charlie’s footfall up the front steps. 

Harry jumps up to remove himself to the kitchen and thereby the larder, vaguely with the intent of being able to welcome Charlie with a drink too, partly because Harry’s very insistently roving eye made him feel absurdly guilty about the little scene Charlie was about to interrupt. Would he mind? Harry minds being used as some sort of reception service for Charlie’s romantic encounters but you don’t see him refusing, so surely he’s entitled to a little of this softest flirtation, if in fact that’s not just a flight of wishful thinking in itself. 

As soon as he hears their voices, though, Harry decides he’s better off hiding where he is. It’s getting late -  half ten, good god, has he really been making smalltalk with Eggsy for the best part of an hour? - and if he offers more drinks, there’s every chance they’ll feel compelled to accept and then they’ll all just be stuck sitting about awkwardly, waiting for someone to feign a sudden bout of exhaustion and excuse them to bed, or perhaps not even bothering with that considering how little gloss Charlie had put on the arrangement for Harry’s sake.

Even the thought of it makes the back of Harry’s neck hot, and he dithers around so much that thankfully - or not, the more he allows himself to consider further implications - they’ve taken themselves up to bed. 

It seems somehow rude to follow suit too quickly but really, what else is he going to do: pace around his living room for an appropriate amount of time? What even is the appropriate amount of time? They’re in they’re in their early twenties, for heaven’s sake, it could be minutes or hours. Days. He’ll not be pushed out of the comfort of his own bedroom by its proximity to young lovers when there’s every possibility they’ll hole up all weekend and only get dressed for long enough to raid his refrigerator: he’s sure he’s got earplugs in his en suite somewhere, if it comes to it.

Oh, to be young again. 

It’s a merciless fluke of timing then, he presumes, that aligns a lull in background noise with the exact moment Harry is crossing the landing past the guest bedroom to his own. After all, It would surely be the height of indiscretion to request a television in your room to lend a veneer of subtlety to inviting heartstoppingly gorgeous young men upstairs and then not have the decency to turn it up loud enough to drown yourself out. Fortunately he can’t hear sentences but the timbre of Charlie’s voice is one that carries, and without really meaning to Harry deduces enough from the snippets he makes out, the noises and the murmuring that Eggsy’s mouth is otherwise occupied at that exact moment. 

Heat flares up Harry’s back and swallows him in an almost painful rush. He shouldn’t know that. He shouldn’t be listening… not that he was given an iota of choice in the matter... shouldn’t be thinking about Eggsy’s mouth or what he’d look like on his knees. He shuts himself in his bedroom and is relieved that then, even when he thinks about it, he can’t hear more than the rhythmic murmur of the theme music to whatever it is they aren’t watching. Not even when he tries, which he definitely stops doing after a moment or two that’s just enough to assure himself that he is giving them their privacy: he’s safe. 

Alone, Harry acknowledges the thundering of his pulse; the stickiness of cooling sweat under his arms and down the centre of his chest; his erection, because though his no voyeur, that searingly uncomfortable snippet of forbidden knowledge is unnecessary fuel on the fire that is his crush on Eggsy, already catching nicely behind the grate of propriety.

He does not have to be proper here, with himself. He blows out the breath he’s been holding in a rush that’s sort of soothing. It’s harmless. Of course he’s going to get a bit riled up when he’s suddenly unavoidably surrounded by sex: it’s the pheromones, or something, of having young men at it in his house when there’s been no action to speak of here for… heavens, he doesn’t even know how long. A year at least.

How on earth is he supposed to deal with being winked at by a boy like Eggsy when he’s gone without for so long? And when it’s so transparent, right under Harry’s nose: the tension and the glances, the scantest nods to propriety when they’re running so hot that there isn’t time for wining and dining and niceties… just a phonecall and a quick cab ride from whatever lust desires.

Harry misses that, and he almost feels like he’s been teased with it. Academically he knows Eggsy isn’t for him but his body doesn’t seem to have got the message: there’s been soft lighting and wine and now by the natural order of things it should be him spreading someone beautiful out on his bed, or being grabbed and groped into position by strong hands. Harry’s not fussy, and certainly wouldn’t be where a man like that was concerned: he could have whatever he wanted, however he wanted it. 

Harry slides his hand down his trousers,  into his boxer shorts and grips his hardened flesh, the cotton damp against the back of his knuckles already, and tries to quell the urge to imagine what might be going on down the hallway at this exact moment.

There’s nothing appealing about Charlie’s involvement in the situation. There’s nothing wrong with it per se: it isn’t as though they’re related and they’ve not had a bond to speak of, but age difference and Freudian field day regardless, Charlie is simply not the type Harry could be attracted to in a month of Sundays. Eggsy, on the other hand… yes, he might similarly be young enough to be Harry’s son but he’s so gorgeous that’s more of a selling point than a hindrance in honesty, and Harry can’t help picturing him in the throes of pleasure, or with his hands tucked into richer fabrics than he’s used to, pawing at buttons and zips to get his way….

Harry sits down on his bed, kicking his trousers off, ridding himself of his shirt with his left hand because he can’t quite bring himself to give up his right. A bloody cold shower would be a better idea, he knows that, but his prick will simply not allow him to consider the prospect now he has more pressing instinctive needs, and as much as he’s trying not to think about what’s drawn his attention to the subject, that focus seems to be having the sole effect of forcing him to think about what he isn’t thinking about. And none of that is doing the slightest thing to deter him from touching himself, now with the quickest drizzle of lubricant from the bedside drawer. Relief washes through him, chased quickly by the first deep thrum of pleasure in earnest. 

What if he happened upon them at it? Came home early, or something, and caught them doing things it’s absolutely impolite to do in communal spaces in someone else’s home? Surely it’s only by pure luck that he hasn’t yet, they’re hardly subtle. Would Harry get to see what Eggsy looks like in that moment, his body bare and glistening, muscles flexing, making whatever sounds he makes when his mouth is free to make them and lovely things are being done to his body?

Harry censors Charlie out of the whole image in his mind’s eye and then he can move his hand in earnest, faster, thinking only of Eggsy, stretched back and flushed with need. That is of course very similar to thinking about fucking him himself and Harry doesn’t really know why he felt the need to come to that image by this path when he knows full well it’s what he wanted. He wanted to think about what Eggsy would look like getting fucked whilst he touches himself.

It feels guilty, somehow, although Harry’s not sure why it’s any worse than picturing  a celebrity or that horridly straight barista at Nero he’s been imagining in all sorts of positions at impolite hours of the morning for the last few months. Eggsy could be anybody. That lurid flash of washboard stomach and that cheeky grin were come by honestly, at least. Is it possible Eggsy was showing off for him?  That the frisson of excitement Harry felt in his company ran both ways?    


It doesn’t matter. In his mind’s eye he sees Eggsy sprawled in that armchair, winking at Harry to come over and touch him, to make him feel good, tucking his fingers under the hem of his shirt to pull it up and show Harry his taut belly, the shining dip of his navel, the ridges of his abs.  Harry would make him feel good. Harry would worship him like he doubts anybody’s had the patience for yet, at his age: lay him out and tease him senseless, make him make so much noise the neighbours would hear, let alone someone in the next room. Make him beg for Harry, for the pleasures his experience would give him. What hasn’t he tried? What does he like… does he even know? Harry will be better at it, surely, than anyone else his age.  _ Than Charlie. _

He knows it’s wistful and silly, morally dubious at best,  but it feels too good to stop. His body has been uninspired for a while and now it’s decided it wants the thoughts of this gorgeous boy - of his bright smile and fit young body - it wants more quickly and doesn’t care how much sense the fantasy doesn’t make. Harry becomes aware that he’s panting as he speeds up but he can’t be bothered to worry about it, the walls aren’t  _ that _ thin. He imagines its Eggsy’s cock in his hand, pictures the boy keening softly in his arms as Harry works him to an effortless orgasm before they even really get started, to give him a taste and slow him down. Or that it’s Eggsy’s hand on Harry’s cock now, eager and unrefined, tantalised by the idea that Harry’s been thinking about him and wanting him to get off.

Could he hear him, if he tried?

He shouldn’t try. What a breach of their privacy it would be to listen to them having it off, to let that be the soundtrack to his self-indulgence… even if they have gone for it under his roof fully in the knowledge that they would be heard. But the idea flits through quickly with a particularly delicious twist of Harry’s hand, that Eggsy specifically might want him to be listening, hoping Harry will hear the noise he makes.

Against his better judgement Harry actually wants to wait for that... but he can’t. He needs it: needs the release the urgent slip of his hand is so close to providing. Objections be damned,he simply cannot hold out indefinitely hoping to be nudged over the edge by the sound of Eggsy enjoying himself, so he imagines it instead.  Harry tightens his grip until it almost aches, ruts helplessly into his fist and thinks about Eggsy crying out  _ for him,  _ about how he’d look and what Harry would do to get him to make those noises, what he would feel like, what he would taste like…   and at that thought Harry comes, hot and copiously over his fist and his thighs.

It’s not shame, exactly, that follows but Harry doesn’t feel wonderful about it, principally because at the age of fifty one he’s developed something of a routine around masturbation and it most definitely does not involve having to mop himself up with Kleenex  - _mansize indeed_ \- and shuffling over to the other side of the bed to avoid a couple of damning wet splotches. Once the pounding of his pulse in his ears subsides, he realises they’re still watching… is it Oceans Eleven? He only recognises the music because he watched it himself the other day… next door, and that judging by the occasional rumble of conversation at least the first act of the evening is done with, not that he’s too comfortable with thinking about specific acts. For all it feels like an eternity’s damnation he’s sure only twenty minutes or so can have passed since they shut themselves away.

Voices raise into almost something he can make out words from, for a moment, then stop in laughter. If this is going to go on now that he’s not distracted and his hearing seems to have recalibrated, he is in fact going to have to go and find those ear plugs or perhaps the lorazepam his GP gave him when he put his back out after Christmas.

A soft laugh, and then silence. Just when he thinks he’s going to be rewarded with the moan he’s been waiting for there’s rustling and then the door bangs, and then after a moment the front door, and there is silence again. 

_ Oh. Like  _ that _ , is it? _

Harry’s not sure if that makes it better or worse; guiltily for a second wishes he’s waited because in his sex daze he almost thinks the idea of simply getting one’s end away and disappearing off into the night  - specifically of Eggsy getting what he wants at needing nothing further - is almost enough to do the job itself. Good god, it’s far too long since Harry last indulged any of his impulses, much less found somebody to scratch those itches with on such a casual basis.

If, in fact, that’s what he’s hearing. Because of course there’s a possibility that isn’t the case at all. Have they had a row? Has the lad simply abused their hospitality and left without so much as cursory reciprocation? Unlikely, from what he heard it would need to be the other way around if anything… and he shoves that thought back in the gutter where it belongs before it can take root, realising a final option. Is it possible that Charlie doesn’t feel comfortable inviting Eggsy to stay? Is it in any way feasible that he actually thinks he’s got away with it - that he’s pulled the wool over Harry’s eyes and Harry actually believes they’re just friends - and isn’t allowing Eggsy to stay in case Harry objects? 

That simply will not do. As excruciating as he doesn’t doubt encountering them post-coital over breakfast will be Harry can’t bear the idea of Eggsy sloping home on public transport, dishevelled and tingling, because Charlie’s under some misguided impression that it’ll cause issues if he stays the night. They're going to have to have that conversation, aren't they, just in case? Harry can do that. He’s a grown man, he can have a sensible grown up conversation about internalised homophobia and respectful open communication if that’s what it’s going to boil down to.

… in the morning, because he suspects that barging into Charlie’s room in his pyjama bottoms isn’t likely to be welcome whatever the circumstances, and he’s too sticky and tired and deeply sated to muster the effort to even put those on. 

It will wait until morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and to all those who have left comments! I'm loving that, it's really encouraging so please do let me know your feelings on this next bit.
> 
> I'm [ on Tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/randomactsofviolence) if you'd like to chat to me about fic (or in fact anything else).


	3. Three.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two dates which aren't dates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been ABSOLUTE HELL. The good news (for my sanity as well as for smut fans) is this as slow as the burn gets so buckle in, folks!

III

In the end, the quest to have an informally important discussion with Charlie waits for a week, because Harry takes a few significant orders that will keep the coffers comfortable through until the new year all being well, and Charlie is busy with work, too. Well, Harry assumes as much, for given values of the word “busy” and in fact the word “work”: he spends a lot of time discussing spending other people’s money on making more money, with other people brought up with so much of it that money is more or less an abstract concept. It does nothing so much as it reminds Harry quite how glad he was to escape to the military and similarly grateful to have something more tangible to come back to: he was never cut out for all that.

“Charlie, glad to catch you.”

Why does Harry feel very slightly nervous, as though he’s about to make a daring business proposition or ask someone on a date? How has he worked himself into such a state that he feels he’s on a back foot to this young man in his own home? Perhaps it’s precisely because Charlie is so self assured, when Harry recalls being just six foot three of stumbly, repressed legs and hairspray at the same age, whereas Charlie seems content to bound up and down Harry’s stairs like he owns the place. In preparation, he supposes: Charlie will own property, without a doubt. Charlie will be barking orders at the Harrys of the world before he’s thirty, lifted on the self-feeding currents that are his name and the assumption of success. 

“If you haven’t any plans, would you like to join me for dinner tonight? We’ve not really had a chance to catch up since you arrived, I feel like a terrible host.”   _ I have a crippling fear of things which appear to be too easy,  _  is more like it, but either way surely the forced bridging of this strangely natural gap is unavoidable. Best to do it on his own terms, and there are after all some rather important conversations that his conscience is determined they are going to have whether or not they need to take place.

“That would be wonderful, Harry, but Digby’s hosting a few rounds of poker tonight.”  Who on earth is Digby? The way he says it implies Harry should know, somehow, that it’s somehow significant - are there any famous Digbies about at the moment? Who on Earth was still calling children Digby in the nineties?  But then, Harry was about to ask since when healthy men in their early twenties actually sit about playing cards on a Friday evening… he supposes it’s as good a ruse for whatever they’re actually doing as it had been in his own youth, and he doubts he wants to know. “Sunday?”

“Sunday.”

… which gives Harry the remainder of Friday and all of Saturday to stew over the complexities, or potential complexities, of the romantic entanglements of twentysomethings. It’s made absolutely none the easier by bumping into a decidedly smug and conspicuously shirtless Eggsy on a late night kitchen trip for water which explains why Saturday was never on the cards:  _ “Sorry mate, we keeping you up?” _ and he’d smirked at him - god-honestly smirked at him, his huff of laughter echoing from the depths of the mug he was drinking out of - undoubtedly because of Harry’s half-asleep inability to divert his bleary stare from Eggsy’s Adonis belt within an appropriate amount of time.  Harry was grateful to find he didn’t seem to mind, anyway, and who’s to blame him? That body has obviously had a hell of a lot of work devoted to sculpting it and he’s obviously pleased when that gets noticed, even if it is by a half-blind old man.

After that, and unsurprisingly little luck getting back to sleep, he’d hoped Eggsy might stay the night and save him the trouble of a paternal chat with Charlie, but no such luck.

Harry’s still on the fence as to whether he actually feels the chat is needed, perhaps because he so badly doesn’t want to have it and by the time they reach dinner there are so many more gripping things to talk about - work, Cambridge, the weather, literally anything - but Harry forges forward.  He’d manage to gather as much as that Charlie was at least available from his politely meandering emails to Pippa  _ [No, no love interest at home although if you’re paving the way to break it to me that he likes boys, you needn’t bother, I’ve known for years. And if I hadn’t I would now because, my dearest one-eyed wonder, you possess the subtlety of Elton John’s Sunday-best cake stand,”]  _ but hasn’t managed to shake the feeling the he’s being needlessly cagey.

“You don’t have to sneak about, you know,” Harry manages to work up the testicular fortitude to say as they make a start on the second bottle of wine between main course and dessert. It’s all gone so swimmingly as to start ringing suspicious little alarm bells in Harry’s head; conversation has been easy and interesting, the wine is good, the chef on particularly spectacular form and Harry has an unsettling feeling the Maitre D’ might think they’re on a date. On that note, he bites the bullet.

“Why don’t you invite your boyfriend to dinner one evening?” The words are awkward but he’s chosen them carefully, partly to skirt his own fascination - would he have remembered Eggsy’s name if he weren’t so lovely to look at? - and partly to close the discussion as to whether or not Harry is aware of Charlie’s sexuality. All grown men here, Harry wasn’t born yesterday and he makes sure the look he gives Charlie lets him know it. “Or at least let him stay for breakfast.”

“Oh, he’s not my boyfriend.” Charlie levels Harry a disarming smile, conspiratorial. It’s pointedly not quite the end of a sentence, which is just as well: Harry will have no denial, because he doesn’t want Charlie going through the same self-inflicted nonsense he went through and because he fucking  _ heard them  _ in the small hours of this very morning, the muffled but unmistakable sounds of frustration and bliss he’s been trying not to think about all day. He takes a fortifying sip of his wine. He has a feeling he knows exactly where this is going, but the sooner it's in the open, the sooner he can get back to ignoring it as manners dictate.

“Early days?”

“Come on, Harry, don’t be naive. You must have got about a bit? I’m sure you were handsome in your day.”

Harry almost chokes on his mouthful of Reisling but Charlie doesn’t make any attempt to correct his misstep, and Harry simultaneously wants to write that off as a blunder and to connect it with the finger-clicking at waiters he was trying to convince himself he hadn’t seen, mostly because he couldn’t quite face having to deal with that as well.  They’re not even on the after-dinner brandy yet and Harry has the reassuringly familiar sinking sensation that it’s all going to shit.

Charlie sits back in his chair, lips shining, his easy grin betraying no hint of discomfort. He thinks they’re on the same page: that this is another common ground, like their alumnus or their shared taste in aftershave, which might have been to some degree true had he not opened the subject by punching Harry right in the weak spot where his age and his disfigurement overlap. He doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“It’s just a bit of fun. You don’t need to worry about me settling for someone like that.”

The ambiance restaurant seems to adjust itself around the abrupt screeching halt in Harry’s head. Oh, and it had looked as though they might make it through the summer without incident before he’d started looking too closely. But no. Harry just had to pry, and back himself into the sort of social corner from which the only feasible egress is weapons-grade passive aggression. In that, at least, Harry is well armed and expertly trained.

“Like that?”

Charlie misses it entirely.

“Look, I know he’s a prize-winning chav, but I don’t leave him in the house alone, and you must admit he’s pretty.”  

Harry is saying  _ absolutely nothing  _ on that score, he’s not lost his mind, and Charlie appears to take his silence for collusion. It makes a degree of sense, he supposes: Harry’s not made a secret of his own sexuality, and on this visit particularly he’s made an effort to treat Charlie as an adult, a peer and an equal. Only now does Harry see quite how ferociously that’s going to come back and bite him.  He’s not sure how comfortable he’d be with the ins and outs of any of Charlie’s potential conquests, but Eggsy… _ Eggsy… _

“Incredible arse, too. Amazing what you can pick up on the internet, really. Want to know the best of it?”

Despite his instinctive curiosity Harry really, really doubts that he actually wants to know, because what the hell is he going to do with whatever information comes now, other than the rudely obvious? He keeps expecting Charlie to realise he’s left him behind but no such mercy materialises and Harry wonders how it’s possible to be quite so oblivious, but Charlie is far too swept up in bragging now he’s got an audience he thinks appreciates his catch to pick up on the cues. He leans forward over the table with a sideways glance that suggests this information is not for public consumption and Harry nods the question anyway, because he finds he has to.

“He’s a gymnast. Or was. Olympic hopeful until he got busted for weed, apparently, the fucking idiot.”

That’s… a substantial dose of information in one go for Harry after four generous glasses of wine and onviously the bit his mind’s eye plumps for is the image of Eggsy in some sort of leotard, displaying his strength and flexibility, which of course calls to mind the poignancy of the context in which Charlie chose to impart this information, and all Harry can manage in response is a  _ “good Lord” _ into his glass as heat tickles at his hairline, the back of his neck. Naturally Charlie interprets that as admiration and, grudgingly, he’s sort of right.

“Exactly. Conversation isn't going to set the world alight but I could do worse for the…” Charlie thinks wiser of the end of his sentence and soothes the brashness of his smile with a the last of his wine. “Any port in a storm, eh? “

Harry grimaces grudging acquiescence. He doesn't object to the concept. He objects to how typical it is that someone like Charlie would think 'any port in a storm' and end up in Mauritius without realising how lucky they are. 

“And he’s happy with that arrangement, is he?”

Charlie shrugs; puts one glass down in favour of a sip from another without so much as a nod of acknowledgement for the serving staff who put it there, who Harry cuts in to thank. “I should think he counts himself lucky. Can you imagine the state of what he picks up usually?” He snorts at his own joke before he’s even made it: “Nothing a good broad spectrum antibiotic wouldn’t fix, hopefully."

“I was about to check you were being sensible.”

“God, yes. I don’t know where he’s been!” His laugh is a thick thing, plummy and low in his throat; he narrows his eyes almost playfully and it’s handsome on him, the hint of his mother’s spark, Harry can see how he’d be utterly charming if you didn’t know any better. “Come on now, Harry, you weren’t about to give me the talk, were you?”

Was he? No, and he’d like to think it’s not because he doesn’t care but that he was far more concerned with making sure he wasn’t making young love any harder than it needed to be, except it turns out he needn’t have bothered. He’s neither judgmental nor prudish, but a bit wistful, perhaps. After all, what’s youth without a bit of poorly thought out romance? In half cut hindsight, he realises that perhaps despite the evidence he’d been harbouring some daydream of starcrossed lovers from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks -  _ well, I suppose the Hammersmith and City Line would be in the way _ \- living out some sort of secret tryst lest their love be condemned by their social groups.

The glaring reality of a pair of young blokes hooking up for want of anything or anyone better to do is simultaneously sad and a little arousing. He’d done the same, of course, although it had been considerably later in life by the time he’d even started entertaining men, and he’d been a good few disastrous heady affairs down by the time he found himself that sort of arrangement. Goodness knows he could do with that sort of shag first and ask about each other’s day after encounter right about now. 

Charlie’s attitude rather sours Harry’s brandy, though. Poor Eggsy. Poor Eggsy and his dashed prospects and his presumably homophobic council estate. And if all he wants is casual sex then more power to his elbow. But it doesn’t sound like he’d have a lot of say in the matter, and perhaps it’s classist to think it but Harry doubts Eggsy has ever been wined and dined to know what he’s missing: would he still not be bothered about more if he knew better?

It’s none of his business, of course, and once Charlie’s finished guffawing at what Harry lets him believe might have been the world’s most awkward lecture about protection he finishes his liqueur and puts his motives aside. It’s up to them to sort themselves out, not up to Harry to appoint himself some sort of knight in shining armour just because Eggsy has appealing bone structure and a cheeky smile: he probably looks at everyone like that. He even lets himself be tempted into sharing a story or two of his own encounters, absolutely not to get his own back on Charlie for the ‘in your day’ comment -  _ really  _ \- but because he wants to keep Charlie feeling that he’s able to gossip.

... although, that said, if Harry feels like another one of these quasi-fatherly talks coming on he’ll make sure he either has a lot less or a lot more to drink first.  

Either way, the Cognac and friendly indiscretion carry on long enough into the night that Harry can at least go to bed in peace, safe in the knowledge that all he has to worry about overhearing -  for tonight at least - is Charlie’s snoring.

 

X.

 

London is a city apart however you approach it, which is one of the reasons Harry has never felt at home anywhere else. Six hundred square miles and eight million people but Harry’s London boils down to a city of his own that he knows as though its map is inscribed on his very heart: the tailors, his house, and the path he walks - on the increasingly infrequent days he can be bothered, which he needs to re-dedicate himself to if he’s to maintain his physique - between; Knightsbridge; the detour he forces himself to walk when he finishes at lunchtime on a Friday, self-rewarding  because it takes him via a bakery in lower Belgravia that he became a regular at when he’d been helping a heavily pregnant Philippa settle into her Pied-a-Terre there. 

Like so much of London it’s a bizarre liminal space between cultures, with a utilitarian set of council flat buildings adjacent to an avenue of Edwardian townhouses, separated only by a bus stop, a nail bar, a Turkish grocery and this particular cafe.  If he times it right, he gets there just after the workmen having their lunchtime all day breakfasts - he has never quite worked out whether they skip breakfast and have it at lunchtime or if the fry up is just the chosen meal to stoke you up regardless of the time, never quite felt the ability to ask without getting his teeth knocked down his throat  - and before the Montessori school mums sitting down for a bit of cake and a breather between picking up the toddlers and the juniors at half three. He’s sure he brought Pippa and a very young Charlie here once or twice, now he thinks about it,  __ when Christopher wasn’t around…  _ which could have been any time between conception and their divorce or in fact last week _ , he thinks, and it’s rare he musters that sort of bitterness towards Charlie’s father these days. Perhaps it’s because the results of his proxy parenting by boarding school and credit card have been quite so evident of late: something has shifted, since Harry made the effort to square with Charlie, and not all for the better. At least Harry has the afternoon to himself. 

Not unusually, the pavement outside the bakery is clogged up with the sort of youths Harry would consider casually crossing the road to skirt were the place he was trying to get to not directly behind them, and he’s weighing up whether it’s quite worth picking his way through their small group when he realises that one of them is distinctly familiar, and another is definitely taking umbrage to Harry squinting at them whilst he puts that together. 

“The fuck you looking at, Captain Birdseye?”

“Harry?” Eggsy interrupts his surprise to shove the other young man firmly but playfully by the arm. “Fuck off you prick, Harry’s a mate. What are you doing here?”

“I... used to live near here.” It’s not exactly true but it’s close enough, and quicker than the truth. “And this is my favourite place to come and get a bacon sandwich and a bit of cake when I finish work early, they have…” He’s about to start defending why he might happen to be there, but it doesn’t appear that Eggsy finds their chance meeting as suspicious as Harry inexplicably feels like he’s made it. There’s an adage, he’s sure, about things that have a one in a million chance of happening actually happening more often than not and of course it would be his luck to manage to avoid Eggsy in his own hallway and then run into him here. 

“Yeah? We just got done on a site clearance down the road.” Eggsy steps forward, detaching himself from his peers and Harry can see then that he’s scuffed and dirty but looks relaxed in it: paint crusted on his workboots and the jeans he’s got tucked into the tops, navy t shirt patchy with dust and drying sweat and Harry alarmingly finds that he’d really like to sniff him, not that he’ll even consider actually doing so.  _ “Incredible arse”, _ supplies Charlie’s voice in Harry’s head, unbidden and unwelcome, though if it had been entirely unexpected perhaps Harry wouldn’t have been trying so desperately not to think about it. 

“Yeah, see you Friday,” Eggsy tosses over his shoulder to one of the other young men who seems, unsurprisingly, less inclined to entertain middle aged strangers and continue on their way, and beams at Harry. “Lemme buy you a sticky bun, I just got paid.”

Harry falters. He feels like he should be paying, knowing how Eggsy’s struggled for work, but there’s pride in the offer so he accepts with good grace and the bakery is rammed, as it happens, so they take their tea in polystyrene cups and their pastries in jagged paper bags. They both get iced buns, Eggsy’s white, Harry’s pink and most bizarrely it’s exactly what Harry would have ordered anyway… It’s a nonsense of a thing but his lack of a sweet tooth is soothed by what’s mostly plain, stodgy bread with which to contrast the thick, solid layer of unadulterated icing on the top. It’s a simple pleasure that reminds him of simpler times: childhood, or in fact any time he hasn’t been trying to process utterly absurd attraction to someone else’s partner, for all they’re reluctant to use such a label, having found himself in that person’s company unexpectedly and damningly, temptingly unsupervised. Fortunately he has a far better hold on his behaviour than his imagination.

They walk comfortably side by side in the gentle afternoon sunshine, seeming to have decided without words that it will be easier to eat their treats somewhere less crowded, and that it’s too warm to drink the tea whilst it’s still scalding. Harry wonders if any of the people they pass think anything of them strolling along together. They’re naturally in step, and does the fact they’re both holding cups and bakery bags lending a fanciful ambiguity to whether they might be holding hands otherwise? At least, Harry would rather someone imagine this to be a sweet Friday afternoon date than presume him to be Eggsy’s father, and either seems a good measure more feasible a conclusion than ‘man who has just bumped into, and been bought tea and cake by, his stepson’s fuckpiece’.  

Harry risks a sip of his tea through the plastic lid, burns his top lip and swears viciously at it.  

Eggsy looks at him, shock and amusement playing in his eyes, not quite allowing him a laugh yet but smiling with one side of his mouth whilst he chews.

“These are amazing. I don’t like really sweet stuff but the bottom bit is kind of just… bread and it’s all squidgy and, mmm.” Well, isn’t that the damndest thing? A kindred spirit. Eggsy folds the last bit into his mouth, fingers brushing less than half of the sticky sugar crystals from his lips, and speaks whilst he’s still got his mouth full and brushing his fingers off on his already hopeless jeans.  “Well, that’s two hours in the gym I ain’t gettin’ back.”

Harry can’t help a scoff, his gaze flicking sideways and down Eggsy’s body, lest it linger impolitely on his mouth.“As if you need it.” He startles, slightly, wondering if he can blame a sugar high for having completely lost control of his tongue but Eggsy smiles warmly and just thanks him, so he moves on whilst he can. “You said you’d found some work? How was it?”

“Yeah, good. Just a few days but there might be more in the future, you know?”

He sort of knows, in that he understands how manual jobs tend to hire on word of mouth but has no practical empathy, so he just nods: now is not the time for glib comments from privately educated men with family businesses wearing suits that cost more than you live on for a month, and he’s acutely aware of that. Their feet lead them to the edge of the green and for want of any other particular direction calling to them, they begin to amble along one side.  “Charlie tells me you were almost an Olympic gymnast.”

“Charlie told you that?”

Harry nods again, not particularly wanting to indulge or dismiss Eggsy’s obvious surprise that Charlie would be discussing him in any detail. He doesn’t tell him why he told him. He’s not seen enough of Eggsy since that spectacularly awkward dinner to have to look him in the eye and recall Charlie’s pointed comments about his flexibility and his lack of other options, thank Christ, although he’s doing so now and having mentioned it feels like something of a confession:  _ naturally I have given the idea a great deal of thought. _

“Yeah, got in a bit of trouble. Stupid really. Drugs.” His eyes widen over his tea. “Only weed! And I’m not - I won’t get Charlie into nothing.” 

It’s touching that he thinks that would worry Harry, really. 

“That’s a shame. Might loosen him up a bit.” 

Eggsy fights to swallow his drink around a laugh and it’s nice to surprise him: Harry can absolutely credit how someone Eggsy’s age would look at him and think he’d folded his clothes and been in bed by nine all his life, all the better to get up early and do the Times crossword over bland muesli but he had in fact been at college in the seventies, and had something of a life since, in places.

“No way! You smoked?”

Harry refrains from commenting with a mouthful of iced bun, swished down with a swig of tea before he’s finished chewing. It’s almost liberating. He wishes absently that they’d been the same age, that Eggsy might have known him when he was young and whole and handsome. He can’t imagine how their paths would have crossed but it follows that if Eggsy can end up in Charlie’s bedroom, Harry might have had a chance in his day, which only strikes a match off the side of the sense of competition which seems to be otherwise stone cold. It’s strange, really, that the age difference between them implies this polite setting when in other circumstances this would seem so inappropriate. Is it supposed to be? Is he supposed to be immune to drooling after Eggsy, his easy charm, or does it not matter because they’re all expecting a man Harry’s age to behave himself?

Eggsy seems to be having something of his own revelation, chuckling wryly with a shake of his head. “Can fuckin’ tell you ain’t related. I forget, sometimes, but you’re nothing like him, are you?”

“I should bloody hope not.” There’s another little choked grunt of laughter from Eggsy whilst he tries to drink his tea, which is absolutely worth the rudeness. Harry's showing his hand a little at a time but at the very least it's nice to acknowledge the growing rift between himself and Charlie to someone who is neither his mother, who is nowhere near as biased as she should be, nor a stuffed dog.  He chooses his next words tactically. “I apologise. That’s no way for me to speak of your partner.”

“Nah. Well. You  _ know _ , right?” Eggsy pointedly meets Harry’s gaze. There’s the hint of something in the direction of that wink that haunts Harry’s dreams in the look he gives him, his green eyes warm and mirthful, almost a challenge.  _ Wow. “ _ Charlie and me, we ain’t exactly, like…  _ in a relationship.”   _ Eggsy puts so much stress on the words it makes his eyes widen, as though he’s reading the Facebook status then and there, and yes, that's the answer Harry will allow that he was expecting. He does not think 'hoping for'. 

“No?” 

“We’re just, like -” and Eggsy flounders, unsure in the warm light of the afternoon what he can say, however much he may have already given away. Harry decides then that it is time for mercy, if only for the hope if making him laugh again. He finishes his last mouthful and wipes his fingers unsuccessfully on the bag. 

“You can say friends with benefits, Eggsy, I’m not ninety.” 

The face of abject, comical shock melts into beautiful delight. “Oh, it’s all coming out today, ain’t it!” He barges Harry gently with his shoulder, just enough to bump them, not quite hard enough to make Harry slosh tea on himself but it's a close call. “But yeah, something like that. No strings. Just physical. ” He looks as though he might be considering a back track, but holds his ground. There’s a hint of the pride, of the raw sexuality, that Harry has hitherto only seen on him fleetingly in the small hours of the morning, and it’s magnetic. Harry tries not to let that colour his gentle questioning, to let him kid himself that he's setting himself up as anything other than a friendly ear, but of course Eggsy doesn’t know what he knows and it’s interesting - for a number of reasons - to let him definite it without Charlie’s input.

“And you’re getting everything you want from that?”

Eggsy looks at him blankly and Harry says nothing to clarify, but he lets his gaze linger pointedly on where Eggsy has tweezed up the lip of his polystyrene cup with his fingernails, working the rim free bead by bead and leaving a pattern of little pinched indents that’s almost decorative. It’s not a universal indicator, of course, but it’s a pretty damning tell. How Harry actually knows he’s on the money is that as soon as Eggsy spots what he’s looking at he crushes the cup and hurriedly stuffs it in the nearest bin. 

Eggsy sniffs, using a shrug to resquare his chin and his shoulders.

“It works for us. He gets his bit of rough, I get to doss off your WiFi and eat your biscuits and the moment Tom Hardy comes knocking I’m off, mate.” He points over his shoulder as though the man himself has jogged past and extended an invite for Eggsy to come up and see his etchings and really, Harry wouldn’t blame either of them in the slightest. “No mess, no fuss. Simples.”

Harry lets his face let Eggsy know he doesn’t believe a word of it, but he won’t push him.  “There’s such a thing, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, as  _ damning with faint praise _ ?”

“Well,  it’s better than not knowing where your next shag’s coming from, innit?”  

Is it? It’s been a long time since Harry could even attempt a reasonable guess, if he’s honest. Any comment about the quality of said shagging is woefully conspicuous in its absence, although that might just be a last attempt to claw back some sort of propriety considering how the conversation’s derailed so far because if he comes right out and says he's not getting his fair share, who knows where they'll end up? This is not within a hundred leagues of how Harry imagined his afternoon unfolding, so he can’t begin to put together how Eggsy feels about it. Eggsy shrugs again, bundles up the paper bag that held his iced bun and pokes the protruding corners in through the gaps between his fingers.

“People ain’t so chill back home. Have to be careful how you look at people, how you talk, who you talk to. Get it wrong and you’ll have a lot worse to deal with than…” he trails off, having grown a shade too sincere for whatever lewd colloquialism would otherwise have finished his sentence.

Heavens. Charlie had said something about Eggsy not being able to bring anyone home, presumably in tactless apology for the fact that Harry's house had become the base for their activities and he'd presumed it was due to living arrangements. The idea that he, rather than Charlie as Harry stupidly worried, might be the one not comfortable to be himself around family and friends makes the sugary thickness still clinging to Harry's tongue taste like dust. He remembers that feeling all too well, and there's no way a boy like Eggsy should be struggling for options.

“I’m sorry that it’s been like that for you.”  Unthinkingly, he lays his hand on Eggsy’s shoulder. It feels horridly paternal and then the soft stroke of his hand he turns it into to negate that feels far too solicitous, so he pulls away as though he’s just pinched hot toast out of the toaster. That only makes it worse, partly because Eggsy leans into the touch as he withdraws it and almost loses his balance, putting his hand out to brace himself against Harry’s arm so they end up in almost the same half-hold they would have been in to begin with. 

Worst of all, Eggsy’s staring at him, not offended or frightened but thoughtful and for a fluttering off-beat Harry wonders if he’s put his old glasses on, for Eggsy to be looking at him like that.  The moment hangs, serene, pared right down to the traffic and the birdsong, Harry floundering for some sort of sense with which to break the silence but Eggsy shakes free of it first, cutting his gaze away and loudly re-crumpling up his paper bag as he takes his first steps back and away.

“I’ve... got to go get my bus.”

  
  
  



	4. Four.

IV

It’s a little strange: going to the cinema has always felt like a perfectly reasonable solo activity, like eating sushi at the counter seats and reading a book in a hotel bar with his glass of wine, but Harry’s got so used to having Charlie and to some extent Eggsy around at home that it feels peculiar to have a whole row of seats and silence between him and the nearest person. Surely he deserves the indulgence, though, having hauled his now decreasingly puddinglike arse to the gym after work three days of the preceding five, and even gone for a gratuitous run because if he’s going to be exiled from his own home in the evenings for the sake of giving the impression that he has a life he may as well get himself back into shape in the process. All the better for when he does -  perhaps, eventually - have someone to share his popcorn with... although he’d like to imagine that were he to get back on the scene, his Friday evenings might consist of something more exciting than action thrillers, reduced-sugar slush puppies and the weekly reminder that he’s less than a decade off a senior discount,  _ Jesus fucking Christ alive.  _

It does mean he’s left the house vacant of a Friday evening, which has got to earn him some brownie points, surely?  He half expects to come home to some bacchanalian scene or at least the sounds of pleasure not being inhibited for the sake of other residents … not that there seems to have been a huge amount of discretion in that department anyway, but he thought they might appreciate the gesture. Is it possible Charlie has actually got _louder_ since the cards have been on the table as regards his liaison with Eggsy?  Is he showing off? It’s quite obvious he thinks Harry some sort of fossil, disregarding him as a rival in that although he expects Harry to admire his quarry - to be envious, even - and it’s not occurred to him that Harry may have his own irons in the fire. 

… Chance would be a bloody fine thing. Harry’s half tempted to swing by a particular pub or fire off a couple of texts, to bring someone home and make an absolute racket about it just to reestablish his dominance but ultimately by the time the credits roll and he grabs himself a cab it’s gone eleven and he’s far too tired for any of that nonsense. 

As it turns out, it would be a waste of time anyway - as a territory marking exercise, he’s less convinced about the sex - because Harry arrives home to a conspicuously silent house. Nobody’s even home, much less up to anything interesting. Or rather, they might be, but if they are they’re doing it elsewhere, because Charlie in fact comes creeping home the following morning just as Harry is coming down for breakfast.

He clearly thinks he’s got away with it at first because Harry isn’t there to see him actually walk in the door, but he gives the game up when he sees the look on Harry’s face and puts together how unlikely it would be for him to dress in yesterday’s clothes to go to the kitchen. 

That, and he appears to be missing a button from his shirt. 

Oh, to be his age and still pretty enough that a great suit had that effect on people… on someone like Eggsy, specifically. Harry doesn’t recall where Charlie said he was going, if he mentioned it at all, and he suspects perhaps harshly from the clothing that it wouldn’t be somewhere he’d allow Eggsy to be seen, that he’d have stopped by late at night to cash in on looking so handsome. _That_ he certainly must have done, to still look so passable in his current state. 

Dwelling does him no good, Harry knows that, but sometimes he does mourn the years wasted on trying to cram himself into a life other people expected of him before he lost his eye: his time for crawling home at nine AM in clothes that have spent the night on a floor, smelling at best of another man’s soap and aftershave were rather over before they’d begun. It’s with a soft sort of fondness, and enjoyment by proxy that he finds he can’t even resent Charlie for it. 

“Had a good night?”

Charlie laughs, caught out, and Harry presents him with a mug of black coffee. 

“Very. Suffering, a tad.” It looks every word the truth. No dark circles have come out yet but he’s got that rewarding pallor that comes with not enough sleep, and the highly suspect redness of neck and jaw and lip that comes with having very good reasons for not sleeping. 

“And how  _ is _ young Eggsy?"

“Hmm? Fine, I think.” Charlie takes a grateful sip of his coffee, looking lost. 

_ Oh. _ Oh, of course. Not that Charlie is even aware of their little stroll through the park - it seemed too odd a thing to deliberately mention - but Harry distinctly remembers gathering the impression that it wasn’t safe or appropriate for Eggsy to have men round, so he’d have worked that out eventually even if Charlie hadn’t put his foot in it. 

Sure enough, Charlie’s face falls over the following moment’s anticipatory silence and some sadistic part of harry really looks forward to seeing him trying to wriggle his way off that hook, to seeing whether he’s going to shrug it off or own up. Harry may be wrong, of course: the lad is exhausted, hungover or both, there’s every chance that’s the facial expression of trying not to throw up. 

“He’ll probably be over this evening.” Charlie drains his coffee, winces, and rifles through the drawer until he finds the pack of ibuprofen, and Harry can’t tell if he thinks that’s cowardly: his own hangovers are  _ shocking  _ these days but at Charlies age he likes to think he just toughed it out with a little pride. But then, at that age he was in the military and regularly had worse to deal with than headaches inflicted by someone’s home brew or smuggled in foreign god-knows-what, so his sympathy for Charlie’s morning after is fairly limited.

There’s a thoughtful pause, artfully casual.

“Oh, Harry?  Best not to mention that I was out last night.”  _ Or the fact you didn’t come home?   _ “It wasn’t the sort of thing I could invite him to, so I might have made some excuses. To spare his feelings, you know.”

Harry nods.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Harry is acutely aware that his silly crush on Eggsy is pushing its tendrils into his judgement, because he knows their arrangement is a casual one and there’s every chance that spending the night with someone else is not in contravention of that… but it could, if one were sensitive, sound a little like Charlie is trying to make sure Harry doesn’t say anything, which implies he thinks Eggsy would be upset. 

Harry spends an utterly undue amount of time stewing on it whilst he empties the dishwasher, emails Phillipa one of his increasingly comedic updates - it is after all her fault he feels like David Attenborough in his own home -  and does all of his housework top to bottom as loudly as humanly possible. Charlie resurfaces at around three pm, doesn’t quite have the audacity to complain about Harry’s suspiciously pressing need to vacuum the upstairs landing, and in return Harry keeps quiet when he hears him on the phone organising his evening’s entertainment or, more precisely, telling his evening’s entertainment that he’s home and willing to receive a visit.  _ Magnanimous of him.  _

A lesser man might deliberately put his foot in it, of course, but if Eggsy in fact doesn’t care then Harry will come off as petty, and if he does there’s every chance he will call a halt to their tryst and then… well, that would certainly make diplomatic relations in Harry’s household difficult, for a start. 

It’d be to the detriment of the scenery as well, although Harry can’t quite muster his usual humour and when Eggsy softens his wink of greeting with a warm smile, Harry finds he can only nod at him from the living room. Against his better conscience he’s determined to hold his tongue, but he’s not confident of his poker face should they get into a proper conversation, and what would Eggsy want with Harry’s tea and biscuits and chatter anyway?   If they’re all business, let them get on with it. 

It doesn’t mean Harry has to be happy about it.  Eggsy looks almost a little disappointed at the bluntness with which he’s ushered straight upstairs, not that Charlie pays that any mind and Harry’s not sure what else he’d be expecting, apart from perhaps some smart comment from Harry as he kicks his shoes off or perhaps a warmer welcome, but it’s not as though that matters. 

Harry turns the brightness up on his kindle, but leaves the lights off because he finds the semi darkness is good company for his mood: the living room is never fully dark anyway thanks to the position of a street light right outside and he almost feels as though he can hide there. He’s certainly not going upstairs for a while. Being able to hear bits and pieces of the activities in the room next door was bad enough to start with, and then life had tempted him with the acknowledgment of whatever not-quite-imaginary tension exists between him and Eggsy, and guilt had neatly plaited itself with fantasy for which fuel would be abundant if Harry was unscrupulous enough to listen in. Now that’s even further sullied by his distaste for Charlie’s behaviour: if he knew for a fact that it was all part of the deal then perhaps he’d let it go, but as it is he just feels like he’s complicit in Eggsy being at best used by someone with rival interests, at worst outright deceived. He'd be less bothered if he was convinced it was worth it for him. 

For now, the silence is telling, ominous, waiting to be broken with one of Charlie’s noises and Harry just… can’t deal with it. It burns somewhere in his chest, like a half-chewed mouthful swallowed too quickly. He’s ill equipped to deal with the guilt of wanting to listen, the jealousy of knowing what’s happening and the sheer injustice of it all. It’s jarring to admit it when it’s current, with Eggsy under his roof and real, but they’re the words for what he’s been thinking: Eggsy deserves better. He’d do so much better.

Harry gets up and pours himself a drink from the wet bar, the neck of the decanter cracking against the glass,  but the crystal holds and he knocks it back in three slow swallows, hoping for an instant relief that isn’t coming. 

He knows he’s drunk it too quickly, that he won’t be feeling the effects until they catch up but he pours the second anyway. He can’t concentrate on reading, what else is he going to do, go back to bed just in time to hear Charlie’s effortless satisfaction, his sneer curling around something tawdry that’s supposed to be sexy, or Eggsy moaning out a name that isn’t the one Harry wants to hear?

Or worse, none at all? He can’t credit that Eggsy’s entirely the silent type and yet for all he’s overheard, unwillingly most of the time, Harry still doesn’t know what he sounds like in true bliss. Eggsy himself hinted it wasn’t entirely balanced, Charlie’s hardly the generous type and as much as said that it doesn’t bother him whether Eggsy has as good a time, which would be awful manners anyway, but with a boy like that it’s… sacrilege.

Harry downs another hard swallow of his scotch. Pretends he still can’t hear the rhythmic thumping that a bitchy voice in his head points out is a little faster than it ought be at this point in proceedings. His smugness is short lived when he involuntarily imagines Eggsy pressed face first into bedclothes, the way that twisted up expression of frustrated pleasure that happens when you can’t help yourself enjoying what's not enough would look on him.

He’s losing his mind. He knows better than to drink and attempt social media but as soon as he’s clear headed Harry will be setting up a dating profile and an app or two for the quicker wins besides: he’s not absent anything at all going for him, and if someone like Eggsy will trudge three zones on public transport for some dubious company and a mediocre fuck from Charles fucking Hesketh-Wilmott, surely Harry will be able to pick  _ someone  _ up and put paid to the desperation that is prying him from his senses. This is ridiculous. 

He’s in the kitchen, still in the dark, grudgingly watering down his next drink when he hears footsteps and turns just in time to see the object of his belated mid life crisis wrestling his sweatshirt back into place.

“Good evening, Eggsy.”

“Fuck, you scared the shit out of me.”  It’s not surprising. Harry’s used to navigating his house without relying too heavily on being able to see, but Eggsy isn’t. Neither of them move to switch the light on, though, so they just stand as though the moment itself us waiting for Eggsy’s eyes to adjust and Harry to have his first proper look at him since they shared a bewildering moment in a park.

There’s no way he’ll be expected to miss the solid bulge in his trousers, for a start.  Eggsy shifts, starts as if to look down but then resets his shoulders: he knows Harry can see, he knows Harry knows that he knows he can see, there’s no point either of them trying to pretend. It’s not such a leap from any of the other hints at the nature of their relationship or lack thereof, let alone the direct comments, and  _ that wink _ . It’s almost funny. It should be funny, were Harry another drink in and not so sour about it and that’s not Eggsy’s problem so Harry lets the alcohol warm his words and his smile. 

“Refreshments for round two? There’s some…”  he almost offers to cut up some oranges but Eggsy’s probably much too young to get that reference. It feels bitter on his tongue but comes out, at least he hopes, something more like playful. 

“Nah.”  Eggsy turns his head and straightens his back. His expression is surprisingly sober.  “He’s gone to sleep. I’m just gonna, you know. Sort myself out and go home.” 

Does he mean sort himself out as in straighten up, or  _ sort himself out?  _ There’s no way in hell a boy like that should be needing to sort himself out. Not in Harry’s house. He’s so taken aback it robs him of the ability to speak properly for a moment, and the result is that he stands gawping like a particularly gormless whisky-addled trout until Eggsy feels compelled to express sympathy by lifting one shoulder in a resigned shrug. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Harry steps closer, lowers his voice and finds his fingertips closed around the dry cotton of Eggsy’s sleeve. 

“Why do you do this to -” No. Not  _ why do you do this to yourself _ , it’s obvious he’s not deliberately courting this treatment and it’s unfair to imply it. “Why do you let him treat you like this?”

Eggsy’s little sigh is almost a laugh, like he’s had this conversation with himself numerous times and not necessarily come up with a satisfactory answer, but he turns to face Harry head on, defensive, and what might be a petulant, sulky mumble comes out like a challenge.

“Ain’t like I’ve got any better offers.”

“Haven’t you?”

In slow motion, Eggsy’s eyes go to Harry’s lips, and back up to see the question held in the gaze between them. Harry feels the warmth of breath on his face and has no idea and no inclination to think who is closing the gap between their bodies, between their mouths, because the kiss is inevitable.

That first taste of Eggsy’s mouth is astringent, cool and saccharine: cheap vodka and not enough of something fizzy for Harry to taste what, though for lack of a tang to identify it by he’d guess cola. He drinks it down with Eggsy’s kisses, rough and wet, heating up in every conceivable sense so quickly that it takes Harry until his lip catches on the sharp point of a tooth to realise what he’s doing. What they’re doing, because as quick as he is to assume that he’s forced his own will into being, Eggsy is kissing him hard enough to hurt. His lips and his hands are desperate and greedy; he’s the one who starts pulling at the back of Harry’s shirt and pressing their bodies together; pushing that hardness that gave him away into Harry’s side, into his hand when Harry trails it down to cup at Eggsy through his trousers. Of course.

“How heavy a sleeper is he?”

Eggsy almost sobs against Harry’s lips. “I can be quiet.”

“Do you promise?”

His answer is only a whimper and a frantic nod, and Harry wishes he had it in him to care but he doesn’t. He suspects that’s not even the drink, or the fact pat of his conscious still suspects he's dreaming. He wishes there were time to do all the things he’s pictured so guiltily, if he’s gone as far as putting his hands on him - so much more already than he ever planned to, what on earth does he think he’s doing?! - he’d like to savour it, but that would be too risky. This itself is too risky but he can’t stop himself now, not now Eggsy is in his arms after all this, kissing at his neck and the sensitive skin under his jaw whilst Harry works his fly open and his trousers down just enough to get his hand inside comfortably. He wraps his other arm around Eggsy’s midsection and hauls him fully against him, the better to feel the press of his body and let Eggsy feel his; to use his height, the touch of his lips on Eggsy’s ear to their full advantage. This is not about how wonderful having somebody touching him feels, not now: it’s about making damn sure in the few minutes it’s up to Harry that Eggsy gets exactly the bliss he deserves.

“I’ve thought about this. Thought about you.” Harry trusts his own baritone rumble not to carry. The whine in response not so much, but it’s worth it. If nothing else, Harry can take comfort that his longing looks have been as welcome as he didn't quite dare suspect. “You’re a temptation.”

A surprisingly composed whisper against his ear: “You love it.”

“I do.” 

So it  _ is _ deliberate. What Eggsy hoped to gain from baiting Harry’s hungry glances he can't guess although it may be as simple as the appreciation he so obviously doesn’t get from Charlie; whether either of them realistically imagined there might come a moment like this is irrelevant because here they are. Their mouths find each other again - it’s a convenient way to muffle the harshness of their breathing if nothing else, though Eggsy shivers beautifully when Harry teases him with a taste of his tongue, a moment’s teetering anticipation before he pushes his hand into Eggsy’s boxers and takes hold of him.

He feels gorgeous. What Harry wouldn’t give to put the lights on, strip him down and worship him properly.  Eggsy’s pulsingly, scorchingly hard in Harry’s hand and of course he’s quick to start twitching with need and frustration; of course he’s already eager, urgent: who knows what he’s been doing, had done or not done, and been left wanting? It’s all that reminds Harry to stick to the use of his hand. Charlie’s sneer about not knowing where he’s been comes back to him, unbidden, and Harry almost wants to sink to his knees out of spite but Eggsy wants to be kissed, loves being kissed: he’s leaking steadily and throbbing in Harry’s palm,  responding so quickly it’s hard to credit that anybody would have difficulty finishing the job.  _ Job, _ like it’s a chore when in fact the feel of him is a treat in itself, hot velvet soft over thick steel and Harry cannot wait to make him come, to take Eggsy’s pleasure as his own reward and cherish the memory of giving it to him.

As soon as he starts to feel grip, Harry shakes the sense into himself to relinquish his hold on Eggsy’s cock for long enough to pull back and lick his palm, swiping enough spit from his tongue to ease the way to stroking Eggsy off.  Eggsy watches him do it, heavy lidded, enthralled, unfazed by the inelegance because he’s imagining his taste on Harry’s tongue no doubt, salt sweet and enticing as it is, and Harry gives it to him on another long, sucking kiss.

Harry’s got a wonderfully warm feeling that this isn’t going to take long. Perhaps he can’t take all the credit, but he’s confident in his skills when he gets his head together, and  the way Eggsy is clinging limply to his back, burying his moans against his neck is all for him.  Harry presses up against Eggsy’s side to get the best angle for his wrist, defaulting to how he touches himself for want of any other direction, and it seems to work: the little hums and whimpers of pleasure clamour next to his ear but he trusts his instincts that they aren’t as loud as they feel and that the way Eggsy’s squirming, his hips twisting, means he’s close. Harry grabs the elastic of Eggsy’s boxer shorts and pulls them down just enough so he won’t soak them when he comes.

There isn’t time to look for more than a second at the pretty curve of Eggsy’s prick, its swollen head showing above Harry’s loose fist, however lovely the sight is: he’s got to pull him in and kiss him again, to swallow down his beautiful noises so they won’t be heard, won’t be caught. Harry's own arousal is pure excitement, felt more in the quick hammering of his pulse in the hollow of his throat than the ache in his groin because that's got Eggsy pressed against it, hot and solid and somehow soothing. 

Eggsy tenses, bends, rising up onto his tiptoes at the very last moment and Harry feels Eggsy’s orgasm as a shuddering sigh into his mouth before the first drops of come drip onto the back of his wrist, the rest spattering onto the floor tiles to be swiped away with a dropped dishcloth under Harry’s toes. It’s the smoothest solution he can manage, particularly as he refuses to let go of Eggsy, just for this pause whilst he seems content in Harry’s arms, trembling, his breath heavy and scorching on Harry’s shoulder. 

His hand wanders from its grip on Harry’s hip and Harry reels at the pleasurable shock of fingertips brushing over his erection even through the thick cotton of his trousers. It jolts him back to reality even whilst his nerves are singing with it, and he struggles to catch both his breath and his composure for what he knows must come next, in spite of what he desperately, obviously wants. Harry is not at leisure to linger over bliss: he's just tossed off his step son's lover - a boy half his age for fuck's sake - in the pitch darkness of his kitchen whilst the lad in question sleeps on upstairs, blissfully unaware.  _Hopefully._

“Do you want-“

“I’ll get you a cab.”  _ Stay,  _ he wants to say.  _ Wake up in my bed.  _ His cock is nothing to do with it, he can deal with that himself but he wants to hold him and he knows that’s insanity. It’s all insanity. They’ve got away with this, by some miracle more than judgement, if he gets Eggsy out  _ now  _ and doesn’t push his luck; if Harry can drown out the cacophony of nonsense between his ears with alcohol, steady his breathing and cool the flush he can feel across his cheeks before Charlie happens to wander down for a glass of water or something. The fear of discovery hits him belatedly in one sudden sobering panic and it seems to do the same to Eggsy, who backs away, wide eyed as though he’s just awoken from sleepwalking. 

Eggsy is, cleverly, completely silent  crossing the living room, pulling his shoes on whilst Harry taps wordlessly at the Uber app and it can’t be more than five minutes and one or two unreadable glances across the darkness before a driver turns up, in which time Harry manages to down another scotch and avoid saying a word. 

No sooner have its headlights gone from the mews than Harry is leaning against the back of the hastily closed bathroom door with one hand over his face and the other down his trousers. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I whinged at you about how hard I find writing longer stories lately? and yet there are at least three more chapters of this and, all being well, another plotted piece to get out to you before Christmas. Some might call me a masochist. Do let me know if you're reading - your feedback is what keeps me going!


	5. Five.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's massive. Get stuck in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently my modus operandi with this fic is to build an almost complete draft of a chapter over the course of a week or so from my original months' notes and planning, get ready to post it, have a change of heart and knock out an entirely new version in like, 48 hours.
> 
> This one's a biggie and took a lot of thoroughly enjoyable work over a very difficult couple of days, so I do hope you enjoy it.

 

**V.**

 

“You look like absolute hell. Should you be drinking this much?”

Harry bites his tongue. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, after all, and he is running short in the eye department to start with. He’s not sure whether insulting a guest is worse manners than being the guest and insulting the host who’s put you up, but he is in fact hungover, wearing yesterday’s clothes and waking up on the sofa. His head swims as the memories, dreamlike and stuttering, flood in with the last of the whiskey and make heat spike to his face and his brain pound in his skull.

Eggsy. Eggsy is the reason he felt compelled to drink so much that going to bed became a secondary concern. He’s relieved that a quick glance around belies no evidence of what he can scarcely believe wasn’t a dream, and Charlie is only looking at him like that because of the state of Harry on a fucking Thursday morning, not because he has any inkling of what he’s done. He expects a kick of shame and fear then, but finds it absent: perhaps he’s still under the influence because the only response he feels to Charlie’s sneer at this horrendous hour of a day that isn’t going to get any better is defiance. 

“I had rather a later night than I anticipated.”  _ You left your beautiful boyfriend unsatisfied so I had him up against the fridge and took the time to make him come, to kiss him until his knees buckled and to see him into a taxi because he couldn’t walk straight. I can still taste him. “ _ But you’re right, of course. Terrible habit.I’ll be paying the price all day, don’t you worry.” Isn’t that every word of the truth? He’s got perhaps an hour to shower, dress, make himself presentable and get to work and if he feels passably human now that only means the worst is yet to come if he can’t get caffeine and ibuprofen to kick in before the last of the alcohol wears off.  The lack of sleep and the abrupt muscular exertion will take its toll, too, but at least the twinge in his forearm will make him smile, perhaps even enough to offset the worst of the hangover but the jury’s out on that one. 

With a great deal of effort, Harry picks up his glass and a crisp packet he doesn’t fully recall demolishing the contents of and ignores the thump in his head as he stands to take them to the kitchen, where he drinks the sensible pint of water and hides from Charlie’s reproach whilst he waits for the coffee to brew. 

He finds he can’t quite bring himself to feel guilty. Charlie is obviously none the wiser and something flutters in Harry’s stomach at that but it isn’t regret: it’s excitement, or something like it. Glee. there’s something really amusing about it somehow, a naughty secret that’s all the more a thrill in the face of Charlie’s condescension. The perfect crime. He’ll feel horrid later, probably, and not just because he’s got to slog through at least the morning before he can feign the aura of a migraine - eye-related, nobody would ever dare question it - and slope home to bask in his bad behaviour. He can only hope that he is in fact as morally vacant as he feels or the rest of it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Charlie, perhaps thrown off by the lack of reaction, trails him into the kitchen. Does he not have anything better to do than needle at an old man with a well deserved headache? Perhaps not.  _ He’s bored. _

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”  _ Do you feel like leaving me to suffer in peace at any point?  _  Almost Friday, which means almost the mercy of the an early finish which Harry has free to… not feel like this, primarily, which will be a bliss in its own right.  On top of that, asking means he can get Charlie to talk about himself before he gets another dig in, w hich is usually a safe bet. Even the way his hair flops around like it owns the place has started getting on Harry’s nerves, and he spitefully hopes it goes the same way as his father’s, which is to say away from his face quite drastically before he even hits middle age. Harry doesn’t doubt his own is a fright, having spent the night rubbed into sofa cushions, but he has at least still got all of it, the grey has had the decency to come in temples first and the curls do take into something more presentable than Charlie’s loose wave of overconfidence.

God, Charlie’s right though. He’s too old to drink on a Wednesday. 

“Probably have Eggsy over for a bit tomorrow night.” Charlie’s ambiguous phrasing and leering smile is obviously to draw comment but Harry ignores it. He knows exactly the line he’s got to try to toe, to regain something like propriety: he’s going to do the right thing. Last night’s little fumble will be an awkwardly enticing memory which he will be more free to enjoy if he knows he did all he could to atone for his slip. 

“I can make myself scarce, if you’d like, perhaps you could cook something for the pair of you? Have an evening in?”  He hates the idea coming out of his mouth, because it sounds wonderful. Eggsy looks like he could do with a few home cooked meals, and Harry now knows - shouldn’t know, but knows - how stunning he is by moonlight and reflected street lamp: just imagine candles.

Charlie scoffs as though he’s seen the soft lighting and silverwear floating in a cloud above Harry’s head. 

“Oh god, why? Not sure he’s ever sat at a table. Wouldn’t want him getting the wrong idea, or anything.”

Well, of course, even in this addled state, Harry had considered… absolutely not hoped, but considered… that his generous offer would not exactly be met with a request for his famed mushroom risotto recipe. And more fool Charlie for that, too, because for all his mother’s skill with a scalpel she’s remarkably apt to butcher anything more complicated than beans on toast and Harry can’t imagine the boy’s father stopping to show him his way around a gas stove.

Considering his next piece of advice carefully, Harry strips to his underwear and bundles his shirt straight into the washing machine. He’s less self conscious than he might have been a few weeks of exercise dedication ago: there’s a way to go, still, but seeing that’s just what Charlie gets for standing around wanting him to make conversation at this ridiculous hour.

“You might wish to let him down gently, if you can’t see it going anywhere.”

Charlie laughs, all Hollywood teeth, and ticks his tongue, pleases that harry seems scandalised. 

“I would, you see, but he gives  _ the _ most incredible head. “  

That’s a kick in the guts that he should have seen coming, both in that Charlie is not planning to free Eggsy up any time in the near future and that his mouth is exactly the paradise Harry can’t pretend he hasn’t been imagining. Wasn’t imagining last night once he’d left, taking matters into his own hands, thinking what might have happened if he hadn’t pushed Eggsy away and sent him home. 

It’s obvious Charlie’s being deliberately salacious but Harry doesn’t even try to stop the grimace of distaste.  The thought of Eggsy wasting that… whatever it is: enthusiasm, effort, god given talent … on Charlie abruptly makes him nauseous with both jealousy and regret. If the boy doesn’t care, what exactly was stopping Harry having Eggsy when presented with the option? What good’s his bloody conscience done him except for a poor night’s sleep?

“Well, I should bloody hope you’re giving as good as you get, if that’s all there is to it.”

Charlie shrugs, which isn’t an answer, but his sly, one sided grin is.  “He comes back anyway.”  _ Like a kicked dog. _ Harry’s incredulity must show on his face but Charlie still doesn’t seem to have fathomed that he’s not impressed. Harry’s not sure where he’s gathered this idea that getting away with taking more than you give is something to be smug about. What ever happened to taking pride - enjoyment even - in a partner’s pleasure? It needn’t mean anything more significant on the romance front. Surely even Charlie isn’t reserving the concept of a mutually satisfying experience for the love of his life. “Why make life difficult? Face it, Harry, he isn’t going to do any better, is he?”

The horrid thing is it sounds as though Eggsy believes that as much as Charlie does, and Harry abruptly wants to punch him in his stupid smug face. To show him he might not be out of the running as a rival although Charlie clearly hasn’t even considered it. To throw a glove at him and challenge him to a duel: pistols at dawn and the survivor gets the boy.  Of course, were pistols not the default there’s already one arena in which Harry is very confident he could and would surpass Charlie. He sort of hopes he hasn’t  _ already,  _ because that would just be unspeakably depressing.

“You might be surprised, Charlie. Manners maketh the man, you know. It won’t do you any harm to make the effort to ensure he goes home satisfied too.”

Charlie raises an eyebrow at him and Harry will absolutely not concede any ground based on the fact he’s standing in his underpants, clutching a coffee. They’re perfectly respectable underpants, the coffee is having the desired effect and he’s on the higher ground.

“Why do you care so much all of a sudden?”

“Perhaps I’ve been in his position one too many times.”

Charlie stands, speechless, as Harry retrieves a clean undershirt from the airing rack and turns on his heel. That will serve him right for opening the door to an awkward level of conversational intimacy because he thinks he’s got the upper hand, and Harry congratulates himself on the way up the stairs for not making it any worse, considering he had more than ample material. He must be sobering up. **  
  
**

X

“Alright? I remember you finish early on a Friday so I thought I’d chance it.”

Harry is so absolutely not expecting any sort of visitor within half an hour of making it home from work - by cab, it’s been... something of a week - that it doesn’t even occur to him that the ring of the doorbell could herald anything other than a forgotten Amazon order or at worst somebody trying to convert him to something. By the time he’s processed that it’s Eggsy he’s already halfway over the threshold.

“Oh, I see. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Yeah, why not? ” He steps in and lets the door close. “I’d like to fucking talk about the other night, or are we just pretending that didn’t happen?”

“Ah.” Harry walks away, so that Eggsy will have to follow him onto more comfortable territory if he wants to continue this line of talk. Then he fills the kettle, and switches it on. Then he spends a while looking at mugs as though the choice of what to offer from his mismatched but significant collection will help, somehow… basically anything to avoid having to look Eggsy in those distractingly bright green eyes until he absolutely has to. “Sugar?” 

“Nah.”

Harry puts the milk in, spoons the bags out and stirs, ringing the spoon off the rim of the mug, before finally turning to see Eggsy waiting patiently, arms folded and a look of playful expectation settled on his face, scrunching his brow.  He doesn’t look as though he expects an apology, but it’s as good a place to begin as any.

“I… don’t know what I was thinking. I apologise.”

“Oh nah, none of that!”  Eggsy takes a generous swig of tea, winces - unsurprisingly, it’s much too hot - and puts it down so that he can step forward. Suddenly he’s all of Harry’s space again: his hands on Harry’s hips so that he can’t turn away, gentle like a caress rather than a grip but just as effective; his body close and his scent closer, smoke and mint and the indistinct spice of generic aftershave as he presses closer. “Just gutted you didn’t want me to return the favour, really. Hoping I’d get a do-over, if you were up for it.”

Just like that it’s all real again. In the dead of night  it could have been a dream, a drunken mirage, and the time elapsed had worked the kinks out from the catacombs of Harry’s mind and left it pliable, a silly crush and wishful thinking, a mistake he’d got confused with fantasy and got away with. But now the truth is once again obvious. There’s something there: mutual attraction at the very least even if Harry can’t quite credit why. It’s there in the way Eggsy smiles at him, looking up from a downward glance because he’s looking at Harry’s lips.

He knows what he wants, Harry will give him that much. Harry will give him what he wants, he knows that too, and the reasons he shouldn’t seem as though they might be easy to dismiss, with a little game of devil’s advocate.

“I don’t want you doing anything that feels like a favour, full stop.” 

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

Harry’s no idiot, he knows where this is going even if he can scarce believe it and his body responds accordingly: blood flow heading south with intent and butterflies flicking under his ribs, but he’s going to let Eggsy spell it out, for his own peace of mind.

“You was hard, I felt it.” There’s plainly no attempting to deny that, nor the fact they’re in almost exactly the same spot, in such a similar hold, and the rest is as good as history repeating. “I know you want me, too. Why d’you stop me?”

_ Too. _

Harry’s restraint, his conscience, what remains of his entire personal moral code of conduct is undone with  _ “too”. _

In the space of a breath Harry finds himself with a fistful of Eggsy’s hair and a mouthful of his tongue, backed into a wall next to the kitchen doorway. Their kisses are starving, desperate, no less intoxicating after three mouthfuls of a cup of tea than a third of a bottle of whisky. Harry has to put his hand up to stop his glasses slipping as Eggsy presses hard against him and twines one leg over the outside of Harry’s as though he’s about to climb him like a tree there in the hallway, and the touch grounds him, just for a moment.

“Eggsy, we can’t…”

“Why not?” He cuts in so quickly he must have anticipated the question, and Harry can as easily line up the rest of the debate before it’s had, but he wants to hear it. “Charlie and I ain’t serious, you know that. I can see who I want.”

“But I’m his…” 

“What. You’re his what?” Eggsy kisses him, bites at Harry’s lower lip again and Harry couldn’t answer a far simpler question were the answer on a card in front of him, with him doing that. “You ain’t his dad. You ain’t even his stepdad. Landlord, really, except he ain’t paying you.”

 “But it feels…”  

_ Wrong _ . He doesn’t say it, doesn’t need to. They both know it would be the end of the sentence and they both already know it’s a nonsense, a token consideration that they were never going to take any notice of, because the way they’re grinding in to each other now would be hard to stop if they were in the path of a speeding freight train.

“It feels like you kind of like that.”

And god, he’s right. Harry would have wanted Eggsy however their paths might have come to cross, he truly believes that, but having an opportunity to show him every delight in Harry’s rostre when he knows he’ll be showing Charlie up is far sweeter than it should be. Harry’s given Charlie the chance; he’s given him earnest advice and had it thrown back in his face, so be it on his head if this lovely boy happens to find the attention Charlie thinks he’s too good to pay him elsewhere.

“Not here.” It’s an urgent sigh because, despite his confidence, Harry may have to concede that he’s not yet recovered the strength or the skill to hold someone up against a wall whilst he makes love to them; he needs to swap his glasses for his eye patch,  and Eggsy is doing his best to get Harry out of his shirt but evidently isn’t familiar with the double-button collar.

“Better get upstairs then, ain’t we?” Harry hesitates, naturally.  “He won’t be home ‘til gone five, I checked.”

He checked. This bruising, tempting wonder of a boy actually made sure he’d have time to get away with this. The thought stabs a spear of lust through Harry’s conscience and kills it dead.

They stop for one more heated, grasping kiss on the way through the living room, and Harry isn’t sure how he’s going to cope with this once he returns to reality: thus far thoughts of his indiscretion have been contained neatly to the kitchen, to the spot he’s blinked in a few times, picturing Eggsy between himself and the counter. This diffuses it through the house, blurs the lines between when he’s Charlie’s, when he’s Harry’s… though obviously he is neither. Quite plainly Eggsy is free, single, willing and able to have whoever he likes but at that moment who he likes is Harry and that’s about all that matters.

Harry allows Eggsy the dignity of walking up the stairs unmolested, although the hurry in his step and the bulge in his trousers are unrefined in all the best ways. He hesitates on the top landing. 

“On the right.” 

If nothing else, the sight of Eggsy - dazed-eyed and smiling - backing eagerly through Harry’s bedroom door is worth every shred of guilt and confusion the entire charade can possibly launch at him and at the moment Harry feels neither: just giddy nerves and the insistent, dragging pulse of want.

They’re on each other as soon as Harry follows him through the door. He catches Eggsy around the waist before he can flop back on the bed and strips him down one handed, burying open kisses against his jaw, down his neck until Eggsy pulls him back up to seal their mouths together again. Romance, or diversion? It’s not as though Harry minds either way, because he finds Eggsy’s nipple with his fingertips instead, and strokes at it just gently until it’s rock hard and Eggsy makes a gorgeously strangled noise into Harry’s mouth. He’s nowhere near as at home with it all as he fronts to be, if he’s that easy to impress, and Harry’s glad of it.

“You don’t need to be so quiet now,” Harry absently tells the particularly delicious patch of skin behind Eggsy’s jaw, nipping at his earlobe. “Nobody to hear you but me.”

_ And I’ve been desperate to hear you for so long.  _

Eggsy laughs out a lovely little noise that Harry feels ruffle his hair. He uses the closeness of the hold to shift them until he can reach the bedside table and he knows what Eggsy likely thinks he’s doing, but he’s actually retrieving his patch so that he can slip it on and his glasses off in one smooth movement whilst Eggsy is still looking over his shoulder.  _ Done,  _ without much ado and with plenty of time to distract Eggsy with sensation, but it doesn’t stop him noticing. 

“Oh, eyepatch on, shit’s got serious.” Harry’s about to apologise for the functionality but Eggsy’s laughing - only teasing - and reaching for the button’s on Harry’s shirt again. “Come on. You gonna get the rest of your kit off now? I’d rip it but it looks too good. Be a waste.”

Gentleman that he is, Harry obliges with his shirt and thanks himself for the completely ridiculous fantasy that prompted him to start looking after himself so much better… the fantasy that is now, by some bizarre twist of fate, unfolding prettily on his freshly made bed. Eggsy’s polo shirt looks so out of place dangling over the end of it, like a relic from a dream or the odd item out in a puzzle game - what does not belong in this picture? But it’s precisely because Harry’s spent so much time picturing it all that he can’t quite process that he actually does have this young man in his bed, or about to be. The whole moment is steeped in surrealism and he can only imagine what it’s like for Eggsy: Harry must be the oldest man he’s had by a couple of decades, surely, and casual though his sex might have been it’s unlikely that members of the same family are a standard part of the repertoire. Harry  will make sure he doesn’t regret a second. He’s thought about it enough.

It’s been a depressingly long time since Harry took someone to bed and longer still since he did so sober and in plain daylight, but it’s all the better to admire the feast he has before him as he lays Eggsy down and takes the last of his clothes off him, stopping to tease and treasure each unveiled inch of skin until Eggsy is fully naked and flat on his back, looking up at Harry with something like wonder. He’s so responsive that Harry can’t even tell himself he’s staring at his wrinkles or anything less flattering: Eggsy’s arousal is beautifully evident and for the second time Harry doesn’t let himself look his fill whilst there’s so much more to show his interest in first.

This is perfect, and nothing more or less than what Harry had hoped for; what he’d planned for, in distant fantasy and more solidly in the last ten minutes: the chance to please Eggsy , to thrill him, perhaps even to blow his mind. Knowing the bar has been set low only makes it better.  _ A full day’s pay for half a day’s work.  _  Harry leaves his trousers on the floor and climbs onto the bed beside Eggsy, mapping out his gorgeous body, the easy youthful cut of his muscles…  part in amazement, mostly to buy himself time to think although it doesn’t hurt a bit that Eggsy obviously enjoys the feel of his hands and Harry’s nerves thrum in response to getting to touch him in the ways he never imagined he’d really get to.

He’s in danger of rushing because of his own excitement, but he knows he’s better than that, that Eggsy deserves more than that, so Harry paces himself with a trick or two. An old favourite, but Eggsy might not be wise to it: picking an arbitrary spot on which to bestow his undivided attention, in this case a shallow dent near the bottom of Eggsy’s ribs shown by the tension of his stomach muscles, and Harry can’t tell if he’s flexing for show or rigid with anticipation. Either way, Harry kisses his way there and favours the one on the left with a gentle kiss first, lifting his gaze to check the reaction is favourable - of course it is, he’s probably never had anyone not go straight for his admittedly beautiful prick - and then works his way up rather than down. Not with any purpose other than to lavish that feature with the attention of his mouth, with a tracing stroke of the tip of his nose and the warmth of his breath, but it’s intoxicating for him too and he knows Eggsy can feel him panting. He’s not ashamed of that: let Eggsy know that the honour of touching his body is turning Harry on, because Harry’s about to show him that his own desires will not distract him from taking his time.

“You havin’ fun there?”  He sounds so… confused, so surprised that someone might revere his body quite like this, which as far as Harry is concerned is absurd because he must put a great deal of effort into maintaining his physique - unless it’s a happy accident of his lifestyle, of course, but either way Harry won’t credit that he doesn’t know how good he looks, but he’ll allow that he might not be used to the attention. That’s a crying shame in itself so he just laughs his affirmative against the damp heat of Eggsy’s skin and keeps going. 

It’s not as though he’s not enjoying every second. Eggsy keens so desperately as Harry kisses the rest of the way down his belly; fully writhes when Harry first takes the tip of his cock into his mouth and Harry’s not sure what he’s more enamoured of: that reaction or the taste of him, the slippery drops of excitement his tongue spreads over the smooth thickness of Eggsy’s cockhead. There’s a moment, then, in which he just basks in the raw physicality of this: Harry can admit the act himself is one that turns him on with the right person - the right prick, if he’s honest, and Eggsy’s is quite as lovely as the rest of him;  it’s likely the only time he’ll get to taste him quite like this, and as lewd as the thought is, he’s worth savouring.

Not too much, though. The tang’s growing sharper already and Harry knows exactly what he’s capable of, when he’s trying: it would be a shame to finish Eggsy too quickly. That would be the beginner’s class and Harry Hart prides himself on being anything but an amateur. 

Eggsy’s hand winds into Harry’s hair but doesn’t try to move him nor hold him still; Harry’s sure he’s being watched, hopes he’s being watched as he gives a last suck and trails off to pay that attention lower, to tongue the very base of Eggsy’s  cock and give them both a moment to slow down. That draws a soft noise from Eggsy too, so Harry moves his nuzzling down to his smooth-shaven balls - an invitation in itself, surely - to kiss there until Eggsy moans properly, and sucks one into his mouth just enough to hold it still so that he can rub his tongue over it.

“Oh, holy fuck.”

_ That  _ is something like the kind of response he was hoping for, and of course it’s only fair to do the same on the other side, to drive his tongue into the divot between and hear the whimper that pulls out of Eggsy but regretfully Harry knows what those noises, and that twitching means, so he backs off again.

He isn’t quite prepared for the sight of Eggsy then: in the moments he’s been concentrating, amusing himself, he’d almost forgotten what Eggsy looked like spread out pale and smooth and lovely against the navy blue of Harry’s sheets, and now he’s pink across his cheeks and right down his throat to the middle of his chest, which is heaving with the visible effort to calm himself.

Harry draws a thoughtful finger up the tight skin of Eggsy’s ballsack. It’s the least directly stimulating contact he can quite reign himself back to and it makes Eggsy breathe out heavily, shifting so that he can look down at Harry once he realises this is not to be a straightforward sprint to the finish, and correctly gathers that Harry might be waiting to hear what he wants.

“I… I like that.” 

“You do. What else do you like, Eggsy?”

Eggsy says nothing, and whether that’s because he truly doesn’t know or doesn’t want to rule out some unknown pleasure, it isn’t clear and doesn’t really matter. Harry won’t let him struggle.

“Do you want more than this?”

“...in what way?”  Eggsy’s eyes sharpen, narrow suddenly and Harry feels the colour drain from his face. That was clumsy. Trust him to be amidst a beautifully inadvisable romp with a young man he barely knows and put his foot right in the implication that he expects it to go somewhere, when that wasn’t his intention at all.  A little callous candour may be needed to back them down from whatever unexpected precipice that was, and if he happens to suspect that a touch of cut glass profanity might be to Eggsy’s taste, he can’t be blamed for playing that advantage, so he murmurs it hotly against the skin below his navel. “Do you want to fuck?”

“Err, yeah?” It is questioning, but only in the sense that Eggsy sounds like he can’t fathom how else Harry could have imagined this progressing, or like he’s just been asked something patently stupid. It only isn’t because Harry would happily have stayed there - perhaps adjusted them so that he could kneel for comfort and convenience, but carried on - for as long as Eggsy wanted… or until they got caught, which is another shovel of coals on the fire Harry doesn’t need stoking at that moment.

Harry leaves Eggsy’s cock - under duress, almost, with a parting kiss and the warmth of his palm - to reposition them, and it would be clumsy except it’s wonderful because every turn and fumble reveals to him some new handful of muscle he hasn’t touched yet, some new angle at which the way they fit together feels hot and smooth and lovely, and Eggsy’s trying to kiss him whilst they make an unnecessary two person job of taking his boxer shorts off; running his hands over Harry’s legs whilst Harry’s trying to wrestle the washbag of supplies from a bedside drawer. 

“I’ve got-“ Eggsy starts to say, and then sees Harry  holding the condom packet carefully in his teeth whilst he rootles for the better lubricant and flops back without finishing his sentence. That’s reassuring, too, though Harry was fairly confident Eggsy was too savvy to take silly risks, he’s well aware everyone has their moments.

There’s little awkwardness then, and Eggsy happily moves back into Harry’s lap when beckoned; back into hungry, deep kisses whilst Harry slicks his fingers and strokes them down the tight crack of Eggsy’s arse until he finds his mark and sinks in. 

Eggsy opens so sweetly for him, his thick, muscular thigh hooked over Harry’s hip, arched back like the heroine of some swashbuckling fantasy and groaning out half-formed swear words that help guide Harry’s fingers into just the right place, direct him to exactly how Eggsy wants it without anything more specific than gasping and blasphemy. Harry may never have been much for a heaving bodice but he definitely appreciates the curve Eggsy presents to him; the gorgeous, glistening ridge of his collarbone; the flushed and sticky skin of his throat. That infernal beauty spot that sometimes the boys in Harry’s dreams could be anonymous if it weren’t for, but it’s always there. His kisses and licks turn into scrapes of teeth, into nibbles that he has to remember to pull at the last moment even though Eggsy makes the most beautiful noises for the feeling of his mouth, or for the targeted stroking of Harry’s fingers. He isn’t his to mark, which is a shame and a thrill all at once and one that he doesn’t fully have time to ruminate on because it turns out that when Eggsy is truly ready to be fucked, he  _ begs _ . 

Having worked this hard, Harry doesn’t need anything more than for Eggsy to want it to be ready himself and isn’t about to deny him. He slicks on the condom and a handful of lube and grits his teeth because that slow first push into Eggsy’s body was never going to be anything but torture. Beautiful, searing torture. 

In the moment’s pause whilst they settle, Harry looks down and Eggsy’s eyes are lazy, happy: not the slightest trace of pain there but he’s got his bottom lip hooked between his teeth as though he’s trying not to make any more noise. Harry wonders if he has any idea how gorgeous he is, so he asks him.

“Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are?”

Eggsy grins and skillfully evades the question with a shove of his hips that seats Harry to the hilt and makes him groan like he’s been winded. Two can play at that game, ideally, and Harry counters with a couple of long, slow thrusts that are as agonisingly blissful for him as Eggsy makes them look and keeps that up until Eggsy relents, boneless, and lets him set the pace.

Not getting carried away and simply rutting them both into quick oblivion is the hardest part when Eggsy will insist on arching his back and digging his nails into Harry’s shoulders like that. That will mark, but it’s Harry who must be careful, and whilst he’s distracted by that temptation Eggsy rolls them until they’re sitting with him straddling Harry’s lap again.

The tables turn with them. In that position Harry can’t do much more than grasp Eggsy’s waist, the tantalising meat of his arse to pull him down and support him whilst he rides Harry’s cock, smooth and hot and crushingly tight. Pleasure winds along Harry’s veins, through his core, and steals his breath away. In all his detailed imaginings of how satisfying it would be to show Eggsy every trick in the book he’d somehow neglected to account for how bloody good actually fucking him might feel on it’s own merit, and not just because he’s young and gorgeous and novel and there’s nothing between them but chemistry and convenience.

“Fuck,” Eggsy whines, grabbing at Harry’s shoulders to pull him up so they’re chest to chest and rocking in his lap, gasping into his hair. “Fuck, that feels so good.  _ So  _ good. So, fuck…”

Harry rocks with him; takes the opportunity to kiss his neck when Eggsy bares it for him, his chest when he moans at that;  wherever he likes, just to try to demonstrate a fraction of gratitude for the heaven of his body because Harry is simply unable to speak. The balance of bliss and restraint is intolerable. He has to move them again, or Eggsy moves them: Harry loses track but keeps up his rhythm as they tumble over in his bed, breathing getting harsher by the second,  pressure climbing and relief hot in pursuit because if Harry’s not mistaken the squint, the tension, the twist of Eggsy’s brow mean Harry's close to making him come.

Harry uses one hand to hold Eggsy’s wrists into the pillow above his head - oh, and he loves that, too: goes limp enough to be held even whilst he pulls at the grasp, but whines when Harry lets go until he holds him again - and uses his other to work Eggsy’s cock, quickly and sloppily until he spills hot and slick between their bellies. He almost screams along with it and in that heady moment it's the most rewarding sound Harry's ever heard: a single, beautifully undignified shriek at the height of climax that he knows he’s never heard the equal of from Charlie’s room. 

As soon as Harry withdraws Eggsy catches him in a breathless, shuddering, sated kiss. Satisfaction floods through Harry in a warm bloom. He keeps his grip on his cock, stroking absently whilst Eggsy keeps kissing him; it builds to a viciously sharp snap of pleasure that takes him by surprise, and it’s only because he’s still wearing the condom that Eggsy isn’t dashed with Harry’s come as well as his own. Harry lets himself fall onto his elbows and then roll to lay next to Eggsy on the wreckage of his duvet.

The dazed silence following begs for some sort of wit but Harry finds nothing but the drum of his heartbeat in his ears. Somewhere in the back of his head, his better judgement screams for his attention, but it’s as though it’s shut in Tupperware: Harry hears, vaguely, but takes no notice, even as it beats its fists when Eggsy tucks himself dozily into the crook of Harry's arm.

"Wow," he says softly, and for a moment Harry thinks it might be the beginning of a taunt, that someone like Eggsy might be too 'cool' for a compliment but the rest is a considered "...just wow. Fuck."

They rest in quiet agreement until Harry has to wriggle free in a hurry to push his fingers under his eyepatch and swipe at the sweaty skin that’s itching underneath. It's  a knock to his flush of pride that Eggsy watches him but he can’t help it. The scar still stings at times.

“Bastard thing. I’m sorry, I have to wear it for any sort of.. Physical activity…” He cringes, doesn’t know why he even said it. “The glasses just tend to drop off at the worst moments.”

“I think it’s kind of sexy.” 

As much as he appreciates the attempt, Harry scoffs it off. 

“Believe me, what’s underneath isn’t.”

Eggsy sits up to eye him sideways. “Be a bit weird if it was mate. This ain’t Full Metal Jacket. Sure it ain’t that bad. Can I...?”

Ordinarily, Harry goes to every length possible to avoid anybody seeing his scars but suddenly, inexplicably, he isn’t quite as desperate to stop him as he usually has been and finds himself just letting it happen, letting Eggsy lift the patch up and look at him for a second that drags on so long Harry relents and opens the other eye. 

Eggsy puts a kiss on the puckered scar at the edge of his eye socket, soft and casual, and then lays the pad back down. 

It’s another long, thoughtful but almost blissful silence, interrupted by the unmistakable crunch of keys in a lock and Eggsy’s eyes widen, Harry sits bolt upright… but,  thank fuck, there are Eggsy’s stupid, eye-wateringly conspicuous trainers, just by the closed door. It’s not a disaster yet.  _ Think _ . Harry thinks, or tried to, but his post-orgasm state of near intoxication means he just ends up looking around the room as though there’s anywhere reasonable to hide him.

When Harry’s panicked glance lands on Eggsy he finds him grinning, holding a finger to his filthy smile. 

“ _ It’s alright,”  _ he mouthes, already half in his jeans, and pulls his shirt over his head.  “ _ Gymnast, innit?”  _

... As if Harry will forget the curved arch of his back, will ever manage to go a day without thinking about it, if he lives long enough to get a telegram from the reigning monarch on his birthday.

Eggsy checks his pockets, his collar, has a final glance around, gives Harry a peck on the lips, and climbs out of the window. 

Not more than eight seconds can have passed when the doorbell rings. 

Harry has actually experienced shell shock, which explains the sense of deja vu as he hears Eggsy cheerfully greet Charlie at the door having just vaulted off the shallow balcony and presumably down a drainpipe straight onto the front step. A touch of admiration shimmers for the sheer brass bollocks on the boy. Which of course triggers thoughts of his actual bollocks, the skin tight and velvety and the noises he now knows Eggsy will make when someone sucks on them… it’s not as though Harry wasn’t aware of quite how poorly, or how little, he has thought this through but he realises if he has to hear someone else make him make that noise he’ll go insane, and if he doesn’t hear it, notices its absence, the indignation might kill him. He should learn not to eavesdrop and yet here he is, tidying himself enough to wander casually onto the landing, listening in.

“Oh good, you’re early.” Charlie had, now that Harry thinks to notice, always spoken about and to Eggsy rather like he was some sort of hired service, without the decency to actually offer to pay for his company… apparently even in fair kind, let alone in cash.  “You’re all sweaty.”

“Well the bus was packed and I ran. Can I borrow your shower?” 

“There’s time, I suppose.”

Hopefully the sigh of relief isn’t actually audible, but he doesn’t want Charlie getting a mouthful of Harry’s sweat, however much it might serve him right. Does he? The thought gets an odd, tired tingle out of him and Harry’s sure that crosses some horrible incestuous boundary but he doesn’t have the capacity to dwell on it. From the landing he can see them, and is he imagining that Eggsy’s posture is slightly different now?

“Yeah, well. Thought we could have a proper night in. I brought Bullitt round cos you said you never seen it.”

Guilt twists at Harry.. Or is it shame? Sadness? Something else? Whatever it is makes the centre of his chest hot as he waits on the same answer Eggsy does, seemingly with the same sense that he’s not going to like the answer, if Eggsy’s face is anything to go by.  _  He  _ would watch Steve McQueen films over shared bowls of nibbles and a bottle of wine with Eggsy more than happily, if that’s what he wants, and yet they’d ended up in bed without anything like a discussion, let alone a date. And it’s alright if that’s all Eggsy wants from Harry - Harry can’t really expect better, carrying on behind another man’s back like some sort of fucking soap opera - but he can’t bear that Charlie doesn’t see what he’s being offered or doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Can’t bear that Eggsy wants that and might be disappointed, and is equally utterly dreading his own reaction should Charlie suddenly decide that yes, he does want to spend his evening relaxing in Eggsy’s company, their incidental caresses taking their time to turn into the sort of lovemaking that would finally commute them from casual-fuck buddies to lovers or even partners.

It’s not to be. Not this time. 

“I hoped we could make it quick, actually…”

“Well that’s fucking charming, innit? Got something better to do?”

“Hugo’s having some people round.”  Charlie is at least just about aware enough to respond to the look on Eggsy’s face. “Just a few drinks. It’s networking. Some of us do work, you know.”

None of them rise to that. Harry wonders if Eggsy even bothers telling Charlie when he gets a day’s cash in hand. He wouldn’t. 

“Can I come?”

Is Charlie’s perpetual half-sneer all the uglier for having spent a couple of hours gazing stupidly at Eggsy’s rough-edged sweetness? 

“You?” He tones it down, but only barely. “Can’t imagine you’d have a thing in common with anyone. But I’m getting a cab, I can drop you as far as King’s Cross when we’re finished here, if you like?” He says it like he’s being generous to oven offer, running out of patience, and Eggsy reacts with exactly the gawp of incredulity Harry would in his position. 

“When you’ve got me to get you off and made your excuses, yeah?” Charlie reels as though struck and Harry doesn’t have time to work out if he should be hearing this - he should never have been hearing this - before Eggsy launches off again. “Do you even know what it’s like not to get your own way? Don’t occur to you that the world don’t revolve around you, does it? That people might have better things to do than wait on you? Fuck it, I’ll see myself home. Cheers for the tea, Harry. Laters.”

It happens in such a whirlwind rush, with the dust still yet to settle from the afternoon’s madness, that Harry doesn’t have time to trust himself with a response. There’s no chance to call out to Eggsy, Charlie just stands gawping - Harry suspects Eggsy’s right, that he’s monumentally unpracticed in being denied his every whim and has no idea whatsoever how to respond to such insolence as a rebuff from Eggsy - and with a twist of helpless anxiety he realises that Harry himself has no way to contact him and no idea if he’ll come back.

There’ll be plenty of time to worry about that later. For now he has to hope to high bloody hell Charlie’s too wound up and in too much of a hurry to catch the slip or notice that there are in fact two mugs by the sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and support, they mean the world to me and really do keep me going. I adore every one of you, please keep the feedback coming! This chapter was a huge wadge of hard work but people getting involved with and interested in this story renders me speechlessly happy.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning here: this chapter is mostly just smut. Honestly, if you're not about the cuckolding kink aspect of this and are here for the plot (is that a thing?) you could skip this chapter and I'll fill you in at the top of the next one. Its a fun one if you are though ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go! one more to go! My sincerest thanks to Renai-chan, without whose "remember who you are, Simba" pep talk this filth would not have happened. Much love to all those kudos and commenters too, you brighten my days and make the fic wheels go round!

VI.

 

It’s not too long before Eggsy reappears, fortunately, and it carries on exactly the way Harry promises himself It won’t.

He promises himself that if there’s any hint at anything further between them, he’ll talk it out with Eggsy and work out exactly where they stand: whether he is simply a one off indulgence, or a physical outlet, or if there might against all odds be the potential for more once Charlie returns to Cambridge - not that there’s anything to prohibit a long distance affair, but he can’t imagine either of them will bother. But when’s he supposed to do that, exactly?

When they bump into each other - quite literally - in the corridor in the dead of night and Eggsy hauls Harry into an urgent, grinning, filthy and crucially silent kiss; lets him go, head spinning because Eggsy mouths _I’ll think of you_ and makes an incredibly unsubtle gesture with his hand that sends Harry stumbling for the privacy of his room to do likewise?

Perhaps before the insane, searingly pressured, guilty blowjob with Eggsy sprawled in Harry’s reading chair, cap still on, with the fingers of one hand in Harry’s hair and the other gripping at the lounge curtains, keeping watch for Charlie’s cab at the top of the street as Harry swallows him down? That might have been advisable, because there’s certainly no time after.

It’s ridiculous. Harry knows that, there’s no need to put too fine a point on it and risk frightening Eggsy off altogether. Harry sternly reminds himself as often as he needs to that there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying sex for its own sake: his own experiences of relationships with men have mostly  been periods of nameless, structureless enjoyment, light on the commitment. Eggsy is… a millennial. God only knows what social assault courses they have to get through and over before anything takes the shape of an actual partnership. Why risk pushing the envelope?

And it’s not as though he’s not grateful. He’s not short any awareness of the irony that he’s ended up pleasuring Eggsy without reciprocation on more than one occasion but the will  is always there, just not always convenient, and it’s far from the point if it wasn’t. Just getting his hands - and his mouth, whenever practicable - on him is plenty for Harry to be going on with and he doesn’t even mind if Eggsy knows that.

There’s something else, too: the smug thrill of getting away with something, of two fingers up at someone like Charlie in particular, behind his back because he transparently has no idea at all that Harry has a life of his own or that Charlie is not the centre of Eggsy’s universe - he wavered, for a day, but Eggsy coming back when beckoned put paid to it. In a fit of silly bravery Harry had dropped some hints that he might have had an encounter of his own and Charlie had simply countered with backhanded congratulations, going as far as to speculate on Harry’s options in comparison to what he has on tap, blissfully oblivious. It’s nothing to be proud of, but it puts a spring in Harry’s step nonetheless.

It’s because of this he’s more or less strutting on his way home from work this evening. That, and his long, late lunch with a client turned into a brandy and an all important handshake, which may in turn be something to do with how flawlessly he’s carrying his midnight blue mohair three piece… a choice which in itself required a little flush of daring, so perhaps in a strange way Harry has Eggsy to thank however one is to look at his mood.

That mood is  jarred when he lets himself in and unexpectedly finds Charlie and Eggsy together on his settee. His heart kicks him quite unkindly in the ribs as he assesses the situation but although the timing is unusual they’re fully clothed, barely touching: Eggsy is leaned back, engrossed in his phone and Charlie is tying his shoelaces.

“Woah.” Eggsy looks up before Charlie makes any attempt to acknowledge that Harry is home, and just as Harry takes off his blazer. “You look nice, where you been?” There’s open admiration there, enough that it makes Charlie look up, first to see Harry - _good evening to you too  -_ and then to raise an eyebrow at Eggsy. Is there even a touch of jealousy? On Eggsy’s part, not Charlie’s: Charlie looks about ready to go out himself, whereas Eggsy could, if Harry were being sentimental, look as though he’s put out by the idea Harry might be returning from something important that he doesn’t know about, or even a date.

“Just a business lunch,” he allows himself to smile, to meet his eyes so that it doesn’t come across as defensive, and that does indeed seem to dispel the sudden line from Eggsy’s forehead. Sweet of him, and entirely absurd given the circumstances.

“Oh. How did it go?”

“Very, very well.”

Eggsy raises his eyebrows expectantly and rubs his fingers to his thumb in the gesture for _cash?_ Harry answers with a nod, and Eggsy breaks into a bright grin.

“Sweet. Well done. Ain’t surprised, selling suits lookin’ like that’s gotta be like flogging cornettos outside weightwatchers.”

That, at least, seems to bring Charlie’s attention back to the room from where he’s titivating with his own outfit: slacks, roll neck, blazer; Hilfiger and Gucci if he’s not mistaken. Harry finds it just incredible that someone can be wearing several thousand pounds and still look like they’re modelling for a Matalan catalogue, but he resists the urge to critique him because Charlie does not carry his name, is far too up himself to drop a lowly tailor into conversation and therefore it’s his own problem.

By contrast, Eggsy is sprawled looking extremely comfortable in jeans and a soft looking t-shirt with a washed out floral print that somehow makes him look harder by contrast, plays up the masculine sharpness to his bone structure, the dusting of stubble glinting from his jaw. Harry is accosted by a vivid image of sweeping the clutter off the dining table and bending Eggsy over it, pulling that shirt up under his arms and going straight for those tantalising twin divots that make the small of the back so inviting, and thank goodness Charlie is utterly preoccupied with checking his reflection in the mirror by the front door  and doesn’t pick up on the look between them, because there’s absolutely no excuse for it.

“I’m off to meet a few of the lads from work. Hugo’s on the guest list at Groucho this evening, it would be a shame to waste it."  It’s telling, perhaps, that Eggsy does not question this, attempt to invite himself, or comment in any way that might delay Charlie making good on his name-dropping and actually leaving.  “You can see Eggsy out, can’t you Harry?”

He could, but he doesn’t.

In the heavy pause that follows the door closing, Harry can feel his heart at the bottom of his throat and waits. Just in case Charlie’s primping neglected to check for his wallet or phone; just in case he’s been dreaming for a fortnight or so and the tension in the room is all in his head, but Eggsy’s easy smile turns into something far more considered as he stands up and rounds the end of the sofa,  watching his own hand trail along the top as he steps slowly up to Harry.

“Thought you was stopping out for the night. Nearly gave up.”

“Well I’m terribly sorry to keep you waiting.” Harry closes the gap and nudges Eggsy’s jaw up with his finger to see the green of his eyes sparkle. The teasing comes easily, seduction like divine inspiration as though he hasn’t been ricocheting between guilt, self doubt and awestruck disbelief in every spare moment since Eggsy first let him put his hands on him. “Let me see if I can make it up to you?.”

Eggsy’s  mouth is hot and sharp with mint and his hair damp and fragrant, freshly showered;  Harry rifles through his memories because he needs to know if he always cleaned up so well before slipping off or if he was hoping to present Harry with something that didn’t so obviously feel like sloppy seconds. He finds he doesn’t mind. The thought of Eggsy having entertained another’s company so recently is shamefully exciting, adds a hot little spike of thrill into the desperation of their kisses and Harry is truly beyond analysing himself about it at this moment.

“Come on, Harry. please.” Eggsy pushes Harry’s hand down to feel where he’s already hard. _Still_ hard is probably closer. That’s worked for him before, after all:  presenting Harry with the physical sob story of having been neglected and again, Harry’s immediate response is indignation soothed with self-satisfaction. He will correct this universal injustice, and Eggsy knows it.

He _tsk_ s against Eggsy’s eager lips.

“Aren’t you getting quite enough?”

Eggsy shoots him daggers that turn into a grin so sharp and dark it’s almost menacing. Harry was almost ready to regret it as soon as it came out of his mouth but Eggsy’s face cannot be read as anything but a challenge.

He meets him meets him toe to toe, keeps him fixed with a frank look and simply says “Does it feel like it?”

Harry feels where invited, rubbing the hard ridge of Eggsy’s erection through his jeans and feeling the whole bulge of it thicken in response. His mouth goes dry, sticks when he tries to talk.

“He’s a fool to leave you alone unsatisfied.” _A fool to leave you behind at all._

“Yeah, well. I can’t say I was too happy about it either.”   Strangely they both know it’s a lie, an invitation. Charlie bucking his ideas up was never the plan and every nerve in Harry’s body sings for the excitement of that realisation, and where it leads. “Lucky I’ve got you to take care of me, ain't it?”

“That you have.  But if you don’t mind…” he stops lipping at Eggsy’s jaw to be sure he’s looking when he points upstairs. “I'm not doing so here. Some of us will never see twenty five again.” Does Eggsy even know how old he actually is? God, Harry feels ancient in comparison to him. _Felt_ ancient, because actually getting to touch and impress Eggsy is like some sort of tonic for him. Certainly enough to spur him up the stairs hot on Eggsy’s heels, and instead of mouthfuls of kisses this time Eggsy’s taking his own clothes off on the way into Harry’s room, down to his boxers by the time he moves to help Harry out of his waistcoat. Instead of turning, Harry simply covers his eye whilst he reaches to swap his glasses for his patch.

“You don’t have to, like… you can leave it.”

Would he ever? Harry wears his patch when he’s in the house by himself, even still, because he hasn’t fully adjusted to catching his own reflection, so he can’t imagine for a moment that he’d ever be comfortable enough to go without. He knows Eggsy’s seen his scars… and quite how they arrived at that milestone with so little ceremony, he isn’t sure… but being allowed a look and having to stare at that in the crucial moments of passion are two different things entirely and Harry doesn’t even want to contemplate how that could go.

“I’ll be more comfortable.”

“Fair enough.”

Leaving him to adjust it with just a decisive parting peck on the lips, Eggsy climbs up on the bed. He crawls forward to present himself arse-up for Harry to take and Harry doesn’t know why that feels like an escalation but it does: he can’t remember the last time he felt so animal, so powerful. Conversely he also can’t remember the last time he went weak kneed for someone’s smile, but that’s less welcome at this moment.

It’s the ego, he supposes. It’s that despite his age and his scars someone so whole and young and beautiful will end up in his bed, even with the option for someone pretty of their own age instead, because he gave them some and they want more. And Eggsy is so lovely, so softly firm in Harry’s hands as he massages and strokes at him. For a slim little thing there’s an incredibly pleasing thickness to his muscles, a gorgeous roundness to his arse that Harry has absolutely no intention of resisting the urge to bury his face in ad he wastes little time on the way there.

Eggsy feels him hesitate with the tip of his finger.

“Don’t worry, we ain’t. Not tonight. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

That wasn’t quite the train of thought Harry was having but he’s absolutely disgusted by his body’s response to the idea. Eggsy coming to him loose and used, that physical reminder that he’s being shared should be offputting but here he is, practically salivating at the thought of him being so wanton that he’d chance it.

On further thought, Eggsy grumbles a little laugh. “I might do it to him. Probably wouldn’t even fucking notice.” That’s even more enticing a thought and Harry files that idea to bring up in a moment when his mouth will not be otherwise occupied. He gives in to his whim to suck kisses against those dimples at the bottom of Eggsy’s back, grasps an arse cheek in each hand and squeezes to spread him so that he can kiss down the crease between.

“What you- oh. Oh shit.”

“No?”

“Yes.”

Harry proceeds with no particular plan, just enjoying Eggsy’s body and his responses: the salt of skin under bitter soap; his soft, heavy breathing, the shameless posture he takes up with his back dipped and legs just slightly apart, his arms around a pillow, ready to muffle his noises or perhaps just cling on for dear life.

For all that, Harry gets the impression this isn’t something he has a wealth of experience in. His gasps sound blissfully surprised, for the most part, and Harry is only too happy to take it slow and teasing: to let him feel out the difference between kisses and licks; between slow and quicker; between flat, surface strokes of the tongue and the harder ones that actually push inside of him.

“Oh god, fucking hell.”  He likes that, then. Harry squeezes the thick muscle of Eggsy’s cheek to spread him further and spends some time working his tongue inside, to the reassurance of Eggsy’s stuttering little sighs of wonder. He’s pleasantly surprised, because he’s used to being shooed away or nudged on to other things before he really gets to enjoy this but Eggsy is entirely lost, comfortable and -  when Harry slides a hand underneath to cup at his cock - so agonisingly hard he’s dripping a slippery wet patch on the bed.

“Fuck, yeah.”  He tosses his head, rubbing his face against the pillows, groaning softly, and manages to speak on his third or fourth attempt. “Is it…Is it okay, if I come? You can still fuck me, I -“

Harry’s first instinct is sheer delight and then to grumble, to tell him he doesn’t want to simply be allowed permission to have his body, but it won’t be like that regardless so he just doesn’t give the thought the time of day.

“Come whenever you’re able, and it’s enough when you say it’s enough.”  He hopes for both, of course: that Eggsy will surrender to spectacular, screaming climax on the end of Harry’s tongue and then all but beg to be fucked, but all in good time and if he loses the latter because Eggsy loves this so much then so be it. And he obviously does love it, if the tremble of his thighs and the eager twitch of his hole is any measure.

 _“_ Are you this responsive when Charlie does this?” Harry uses his thumb to rub spit into the wrinkles of Eggsy’s skin, to stroke softly at his perineum, whilst he talks. “Surely I’d have heard you. _”_  He asks because he knows the answer; because he knows Eggsy will know he knows the answer, and that he wants to hear it. _Tell me I’m better than him._

Eggsy huffs: a choked, dismissive bark of a laugh which is exactly what Harry was expecting _._

 _“_ Charlie ain’t... even really into giving head…” There’s an uncomfortable amount of stress on ‘giving’, but it’s not as though that’s news to Harry either. It just makes him want it more. He wants to explore the idea; the way Eggsy seems to be beckoning him down the shady path of talking about what they’re doing; the dirty reality they’ve not quite acknowledged yet, but that’s easier thought than said when his mouth has better things to do.

“Pity,” is all Harry says for now, and moves back in to lap and kiss at his rim. He’d tell Eggsy what a pleasure - a bloody honour - it is to be able to make him gasp and groan like that, for him to trust Harry enough to be so open to it, but speaking would mean stopping and the lazy, indulgent writhe that pushes Eggsy’s arse back against his face tells him this isn’t the time. He goes properly back to task with his tongue then, slow and savouring as though to prove the point about the hurry he isn’t in, but it has the happy side effect of making Eggsy visibly shake.

_“Fuuuuck.”_

The longer it goes on for the more it turns Harry on. He’s confident that if Eggsy wanted anything else in the world he’d bloody well ask for it, thereby assuring him that he does not: that Harry slowly licking him out is the best pleasure Eggsy can conceive of at that moment and that makes Harry’s cock throb against the bedclothes underneath him even as Eggsy starts gently humping into his hand.

When Harry licks into him again then he clenches up and moans properly, so Harry repeats it. The silent shiver that runs through Eggsy in response is no less encouraging, so he keeps it up: firm strokes right the way over his hole that just press to dip inside him in the middle, short enough that he can strike up a pace and even quicken it when the bed trembles as Eggsy scrabbles to grab handfuls of the duvet.

“Oh god, yeah. Don’t stop, ” -his voice stretches into a whine-   “Don’t fucking stop, oh my god-“

And then he arches, freezes; Harry absolutely does not stop and Eggsy shudders violently as he comes, his hips shifting softly to rut his cock into Harry’s open palm but that’s almost incidental. He’s already spilling over it, his come hot and slippery in the bend of Harry’s fingers, slick over his scorching hardness whilst he slows to a stop and collapses.

Harry lets him lay there for a while, although he’s trapped by Eggsy’s weight on his arm keeping them both more or less in position whilst he twitches and gets some sort of control over his breathing again. He’s just too bloody pleased with himself to be bothered about a silly thing like circulation. Eventually Eggsy recovers enough to roll to the side and sit up, freeing Harry’s arm and leaving a pearlescent puddle darkening the dove grey of Harry’s sheets which he hopes will be the first of a few, at least. He wants to milk Eggsy dry of pleasure, to keep him going until he has nothing left to give and can’t possibly think he’ll have it any better than with Harry. It’s possible that they have time for that. It’s also possible that Harry is really having to make an effort to care about whether they have time to get away with it or not.

Scrubbing at his hair Eggsy blinks like he’s waking up from a long, deep sleep. His first look then is to Harry’s erection and though the look in his eyes when he realises what it’s done to him would suit a blush, he’s been pink in the face for too long for it to show.

That’s no surprise. Harry loves the patient pleasure of oral sex well done and the state he’s made of Eggsy is ample reward in itself, but that isn’t to say he’s not eager for more. He’s so hard he feels as though it looks like a threat so he’s careful to be gentle, not to give any sense of hurry when he beckons Eggsy into his arms, against his body, and kisses him.

Belatedly, he realises that not everybody would be entirely pleased with a mouthful of his tongue considering where he’s just had it but Eggsy grins when he sees him falter, plays it up with showy rolls of his tongue that Harry’s far too aroused to find anything but wonderful.

“You really are quite the most disgraceful treasure, aren’t you?”

Eggsy treats him to a wink. “Wouldn’t be here otherwise. You love it.”

Harry doesn’t need to tell him he agrees and in this state doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth. He goes naturally to scoop Eggsy into a hold, partly to keep him from flopping back into that wet patch and so that he can caress and enjoy him until he’s recuperated enough for another round - of what exactly, Harry will be open to suggestions, doesn’t mind as long as he can keep making Eggsy feel good. And he is, already: Eggsy melts into Harry’s kisses even when he’s trying in vain to keep the tables even with what’s admittedly an extremely distracting sort of nipping at his ears, pressing them both together, surging until he’s almost sitting in Harry’s hands and Harry’s fingertips brush down his arse crack and glance his spit-slick entrance.

“Nah, look.” Eggsy guides Harry to unhand him and fixes him with a stern look that for a moment Harry takes to be so serious he thinks he’s done something wrong, but he holds it for the extra beat that turns it into a mockery of scolding, holding Harry’s hands by his sides like a child caught touching something it shouldn’t be. “You have got to let me go down on you this time.”

Harry almost scoffs at _let_  him, because the idea that he’d ever turn him down is absurd but he supposes the opportunity might have been there that first night in the kitchen; it had simply not been part of the action when they’d last gone to Harry’s bed, and there _definitely_ wasn’t time after Eggsy came down Harry’s throat in the sitting room: there’d barely been time for him to zip up and Harry to fling himself across the room so that he could semi convincingly be by his bureau when Charlie had come in, looking for an imaginary piece of correspondence which had turned out to be an empty envelope. The entire beautifully guilty mess has been both cause and cure for the waves of arousal that have been ambushing Harry at least once a day since - he’s not been so well acquainted with his right hand since he was at college; he’d feel guilty if that weren’t part of the fun - but this again he’s going to have to say no.

Eggsy’s mouth is pink and wet and tempting and in his eyes is a look of determined pride that Harry is helpless for, He’d dearly love to savour what would undoubtedly be all of about four minutes of absolute, unequivocal heaven, but given the calibre of their previous romp he simply cannot resist the prospect of fucking Eggsy, if it’s on offer, so he’ll have to hope the fates are kind enough to him - for once in his bloody life - for a raincheck.

“If you’re wanting me to function for anything else, I’ll have to take you up on that beautiful offer another time.” Considering how throbbing bloody hard he is that’s enough of an explanation, but the devil on his shoulder conjured mostly from Eggsy’s earlier hints and his own almost priapic delirium forces him to continue, on a limb. “I’ve heard… that you’re quite spectacular, and it’s one or the other at this point I’m afraid.”

Eggsy’s flattered enough to believe that, at least, not that he could deny it looking at the state of Harry, and the rest just makes him shake his head in something that looks like amused disbelief. Not upset, certainly.

“ _Heard_ heard, or like… you been reviewing me over breakfast or something? Comparing notes?” It almost stings but the way Eggsy walks his fingers over Harry’s shoulder to loop around his neck and pull him down onto the bed soothes it. The same inkling that pushed Harry to take that gamble pulses louder at the gleaming darkness in Eggsy’s eyes.  “That why you suddenly got the balls to crack on to me that night?”

“You were just irresistible, I’m afraid.” How bizarre, that having hung unspoken for so long, these truths are suddenly so totally unsurprising. Harry goes willingly when Eggsy turns him down into the bed and helps Eggsy straddle his lap; a dribble of his own saliva trickles to meet Harry’s fingers when he strokes up behind Eggsy’s balls to feel how open he still is, and this is just how they seem to be now: frank and filthy and willing to play this particular hand of debauchery for all it’s worth, at least this once.  “But no, in fact, that came up later. You’ll have noticed Charlie’s not naturally given to modesty. You can imagine what he’s been like with a beautiful thing like you to show off about.”

That definitely excites him. In spirit and in body, if the bright eyes and the little hitch of his cock are anything to go by. 

“He don’t show me off to nobody else. What did he say? Did he say I was good?”

Harry tucks the thumb of his free hand between Eggsy’s lips and enjoys the earnest sparkle of pleasure as Eggsy sweeps it with his tongue. He makes eye contact, too, clearly well aware of how devastating that is and when Harry draws his thumb away it pulls from the suction of Eggsy’s mouth with a wet pop. It makes electricity run down Harry’s back. It almost makes him forget he’s been asked a question at all.

“The best.”

“Wish I could say the same, but...” He sucks his teeth and gestures a shrug. They both know what he’s driving at.

Harry reestablishes his grip on Eggsy’s backside and draws him close again, until they’re pressed together and Harry can feel his own hardness mirrored against his hip. There’s plenty of mileage in the fantasy for Eggsy, then, to be so excited again so soon, and Harry can pretend he’s encouraging it to help him along rather than for his own pride. Does it matter?

“Nothing to write home about?”

“You could show him a thing or two, believe me.”  

“Could I, indeed.” He secures Eggsy with one arm looped around his back whilst he reaches for the necessaries, and if he’s not totally mistaken Eggsy twitches, either at the idea or at the stark reality of lubricant and condoms scattered out on the sheets beside them in preparation. The mood closes, somehow, from playful teasing into something dark and hungry. “Is that what you want, Eggsy? You want him to watch and learn?”

Eggsy groans and shifts to sit on Harry’s probing fingers.

A thrill shoots through Harry that he feels from his hairline to his balls. He’s sure he had a moral objection once, in another life perhaps, to sharing a lover but he can’t call it to mind at this moment. His world is reduced to the searing grip of Eggsy’s body around Harry’s knuckles, to the sweet breathy keening sound he makes, the way he swallows down any louder noises at the back of his throat as Harry pushes gently, rhythmically on his prostate.  It’s gratuitous, at this point: Eggsy is more than ready to take him, physically, and apparently easily aroused enough to want to, gratifyingly stiff again and how much of that, for either of them, is intertwined with the idea of Harry scolding Charlie for not doing it properly and taking Eggsy for himself?

“He should be begging for you. Grovelling.” Eggsy moans and Harry’s not sure if it’s for his fingers, for the kisses along the pulse in his sweaty neck or for his words. Has he never been adored? Is it too much, to underpin the filth with such sentiment? He’s so swept up it’s impossible to care. Eggsy’s sweat tastes beautiful; the noises he makes are music and Harry will do anything to give him the sort of pleasure that’s actually worthy of him. “You are a prince and he doesn’t deserve you .”

It doesn’t seem to do any harm. Eggsy seems content and comfortable to stay put whilst Harry puts on a condom and returns to worshiping the spot under his jaw that’s become his favourite as he eases himself inside. From here he can tell Eggsy whatever sweet nonsense he wants to hear: they’re only playing, but Eggsy seems to like the talking, the sharing of a fantasy… that’s probably gone out of fashion, another benefit of his years of experience, though Harry feels achingly old for wondering it. He rocks his hips slowly to settle himself but Eggsy takes him so easily he could almost let himself believe he’s not the first to sink into him today.

Harry just breathes. He acknowledges the crushing perfection of velvety slickness around his cock but concentrates more on the heaven of having a body he desires pressed so close; he lets himself tingle and reel when Eggsy latches on to the base of his throat and deliberately sucks a bruise there; he returns his fond fervor by risking a gentle rock of his hips.

This is something like what he wanted: less urgency, endless hours to show Eggsy pleasures he doubts he’s had. Well, not endless, because Charlie will be back at some point, though Harry suspects that  he might actually not be home until the morning… not that he lets on to Eggsy. He already has his attention, it would only seem as though he had an axe to grind and they can’t be throwing stones about fidelity, that way madness lies, although he knows now that the mention of getting caught is unlikely to put him off.

Eggsy’s thought about that too, he knows then. If Harry hadn’t steered them upstairs would Eggsy have let him have him, there in the lounge? In full view of the door, too gone to stop by the time Charlie returned from his cancelled plans and would be too shocked to move, just as shamefully turned on watching Harry take his lovely boyfriend apart...

A thrilling jolt of pain flares out, and Harry grabs Eggsy’s hair to pull him away from biting at his neck, not because it hurts or because of the marks, but because he just won’t last with that on top of the beautiful heat of Eggsy’s body. Eggsy gasps at the grip, though, and it becomes just another way to up the ante: holding him still whilst Harry thrusts up into him and whispers close to his ear.

“You want Charlie to see you like this, and see what he’s missing?” Anybody would be graced to see Eggsy like this: his cheeks blotchy pink, hair slicked to the side with sweat, jaw clenched and Harry just wants to make him come again at any cost.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says weakly, but his breathlessness is a ringing endorsement in the moment; the way he bites his lip a desperate invitation to continue.  And by _like this_ Harry does not mean simply getting fucked, but writhing for more whilst still sticky from his last orgasm, flushed and sweaty and meek for whatever Harry gives him. It’s truly beautiful, the way all the challenge drops from Eggsy’s face and body when he’s lost in want.

“To see how you look when you’re properly taken care of? Given what you need?”

Eggsy nods mindlessly, clutches Harry down tight to him, barely moving, shifting his hips in torturous little circles that seem to grind the head of Harry’s cock right where he wants it.

It’s agony, in the best way.  Harry cannot afford to be selfish, cannot just lie there or push Eggsy down into the bed and just senselessly fuck him because he wants to be who Eggsy thinks about when he has sex with Charlie - just Charlie? He’s never asked - and that’s a privilege he must earn, must work for.  He folds him back gently, easily until his knees are almost on his shoulders and uses his weight to keep him there; telling Eggsy with his body that he’s in control and hoping that out of the two of them, at least one believes it.

Eggsy spits in his hand and wraps it around his cock. He starts to work himself quickly and unevenly, about double time to Harry’s thrusts and _that_ is what he needs if his face is anything to go by. His bliss almost looks like pain, scrunching the top of his nose and drawing his lips into a snarl. Harry scarcely wants to believe he could climax again so quickly but he’s definitely going in the right direction, and the talking seems to be helping him along.

“Tell me, Eggsy.”  Harry hasn’t thought his through but his mouth, like his hips, seems to be running without conscious input and he can’t fault them so far. It’s a hell of a line to walk and he can’t watch Eggsy’s face from where he’s kissing at his cheekbone, his jaw whilst he paces himself. “Would you let him have a turn, if he waited patiently?”

“Oh my god.”

Harry thinks he’s buggered it, then, but that moan was not disapproval and when he looks, Eggsy is blissful, so he prompts him, hot and more breathing than speaking, right against the shell of his ear.  “Yes?”

“Fuck. If he -” Excitement soars and trembles in anticipation of Eggsy feeding in his own desires. That’s new, and Harry can barely take it but he’ll do his best. “If he does what you say. He’d be better then.”

“Yes, my darling.” Harry rewards him with a deeper, stronger thrust that sends Eggsy’s eyes almost rolling. He’s not got much of that to give but they’re both close now, and the thought of Charlie taking instruction, humiliated by his own inadequacy but willing to stand it for a chance of having what Harry’s got now is about the final straw. “You want me to show him how to do this to you properly? How to touch you, where to kiss you?” He braces himself on his forearm, freeing a hand to grasp possessively at Eggsy’s waist and thumb over that sensitive stripe above his hipbone he doubts Charlie’s even found and then back up to pinch at his nipple,wielding his power to make Eggsy see stars before it’s all over with confidence.

“He could do me when you’re finished,” Eggsy manages, confident but shaky like he’s drunk, keeping his eyes closed, wrist flicking to jerk just the head of his cock in quick pulls. The sound of him, broken and desperate, sends a flare of flood of heat right through Harry and if that’s what just a few words from him does, perhaps it’s no wonder Eggsy’s so far gone. The afterthought, or the coup de grace, is almost a hiss. “...Bare.”

Harry manages to restrain his response into a surprised groan of approval, so Eggsy will probably never know of the seismic shock of arousal that goes through him then, makes him twitch in the glorious grip of Eggsy’s body. But he said it for a reason and Eggsy grits his teeth, waiting, clenching down around Harry’s cock, frantically fucking his own fist and tensing on the precipice as if to dare him.

_Say it._

“You want me to fill you up, and then have him lick you clean. See if he can prove himself worthy of laying a finger on you.”

Eggsy slams his head back into the pillows and kicks his feet, this time silent as strained spurts of come splash over his belly and drip down his wrist. It looks like the sort of orgasm that feels like being struck by lightning and Harry’s proud to have had a hand in it, but he can’t stop to revel in triumph. Can’t stop at all. If he was any sort of gentleman he’d let Eggsy rest and hang his own needs but if he was any sort of gentleman Eggsy wouldn’t have just come like that thinking about Harry’s stepson licking his come out of him.

There are fingerprints on Eggsy’s hips and biceps and Harry wonders if Charlie realises, pays enough attention to see that they aren’t all his, but he doesn’t fucking care. Eggsy feels so good he could scream, and the temptation to take it out on a mouthful of the delicious flesh of his neck, to mark and bruise and claim him now is unbearable. Maybe if he knew, Charlie wouldn’t want him anymore and would leave him for Harry, to be his and have like this whenever he wants.

Harry manages to bite down on the howl that would come out of him otherwise by sinking his teeth into the back of his own forearm. It still comes out as a loud moan through his nose, a hot rush that reverberates through his head, and he can barely snatch another breath back in before he’s coming, hips kicking, grip tight on a handful of the bedclothes and his nails digging into his own palm where he steadies himself across Eggsy’s chest.

It’s only when the rigours of pleasure have passed and Harry rolls onto his back that he realises he’s puffing like he’s run a marathon, and Eggsy is almost laughing beneath him, flopped comfortably on his back with his arms flung out and spunk glistening obscenely from the divots of his stomach muscles. If Harry had a fraction of the energy he would in fact be tempted to clean that off with his mouth but Eggsy’s groping for the bedside box of tissues and smilng at him: sated; happy; as though all of this is not unspeakably complex and problematic and confusing. But then, Harry supposes, it can be all of those things after a cup of tea and a good long sleep. Perhaps a bacon sandwich and then a gym session, because they’ve become Harry’s go to when his brain insists on inconvenient lines of questioning.

“Noisy, aintcha? _”_

“I apologise.” it’s the sort of moot point that makes pride clutch at Harry’s heart: Eggsy obviously has absolutely no idea how loud he is when he’s enjoying himself, which in turn confirms that he has never deliberately kept the noise down for Harry’s benefit.  

“Nah don’t. It’s well hot, I like hearing you. You look like way too much of a gentleman for the shit that comes out of your mouth.” It must occur to him, then. “You ain’t got no one else at the moment then? Unless you do it as his, I guess…”

“No, nobody.” ...Else. Because wasn’t that what Eggsy said? And Harry supposes he does have him, of some fashion. Christ, his first sexual… he’s not even going to think relationship, but it’s past an encounter now… arrangement? That would require some sort of discussion and he’s painfully aware they’ve done absolutely none of that … in over a year and it’s stolen moments with a boy he’s effectively borrowed from Charles Fucking Hesketh-Willmott. That thought makes him seethe for a second in his simplified state. Charlie has enough in life, and on top of it all he has this and doesn’t even appreciate it. If Harry had a boy like Eggsy he’d be sure he wanted for nothing.

“How come?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How come you in’t got a boyfriend? Oh don’t tell me you’re still pretending you’re straight.”

Harry can’t help an undignified snort of a laugh.

“Oh goodness, no, that ship sailed right out with Phillipa. No, I just haven’t -” _met anybody who cares about my work, doesn’t mind my mess of a face, shares my taste in sticky buns and classic action films…_ “Anyway, ordinarily that’s one of the luxuries of living alone. If I do bring someone home I can make as much noise as I damn well please.” It may sound a little defensive but it is at the very least the truth, and still an option should he find himself jealous again. For now it feels as though some of the sting might have gone from Eggsy calling in on Charlie, but it remains to be seen.

“Too right. It Just puts paid to me sneaking in when his lordship falls asleep, don’t it.”

Harry chuckles, first at the nickname and then at the idea of Eggsy creeping across the corridor to him like some sort of gorgeous cat burglar with his frustrated erection visible through prison stripes. Perhaps a SWAG bag over his shoulder, although heavens only knows what would be in it.

“I think that’s probably cutting it a little close, don’t you?”  Although he’d love him to. Never mind his own volume: Harry can just imagine Charlie having to hear what Eggsy sounds like -  the way it wouldn’t seem as though he’s ever made him sound himself - from a room across and it’s the most satisfying thing he’s felt in… well, a few minutes, but that’s hardly fair comparison.

“Yeah,” Eggsy sighs, a little sadly. “Shame, really.”

Harry just about manages to stop himself asking why he doesn’t. It’s understandable. He may not have anything to lose if charlie pitches a strop, but Eggsy must see something in him to keep coming back, and to be so disinclined to insist on better treatment. Perhaps there’s a little more to it, physically or emotionally, than the version he’s encouraged Eggsy to tell him...Harry tries not to think about it, generally: it’s easy to fall into a fantasy in which he is the one giving Eggsy everything he wants but there must be some reason he returned when it seemed he’d realised there was no mileage for Charlie and himself.

He’d said himself hadn’t he? What feels like years ago, one clammy afternoon in the park? It’s not about the status or stability of a relationship for him, but the company, and the physicality. It doesn’t matter to Eggsy what it’s called: he just wants some affection and the ability to be himself.

He’s running his fingers softly through Harry’s hair and that might be why this feels so comforting, quite so warm and right and soft. That’s just the way he is, then: not some sign that he has deep seated feelings for Harry in particular, which is in some senses a shame but Harry could kick himself. He’s well aware he’s an absolute sucker for mistaking endorphins for all sorts of things and laying, spent and sweaty, with a beautiful working class twentysomething is not the time to start considering serious proposals. Not _those_ sorts of proposals.. and by Christ that’s a heartstopping thought for one dallying over the etiquette of asking someone for their contact details. It’s a legitimate dilemma: if he asks now it will seem as though he’s placing an order, like Charlie does. Best leave it for another time.

Eventually, Eggsy stretches out of their loose embrace.

“Ugh, I’d better get a shift on.” He makes no actual effort to move for some time, and Harry makes no effort to assist him and no noises to agree.  “I could well fall asleep and then what are you gonna do in the morning, stash me in a cupboard?”

He laughs, then, because Eggsy’s already shinned down a drainpipe, for God’s sake, and what _does_ he think he’d do? Cook him breakfast?   _Oh, morning Charlie, you’ve met Eggsy, he’s going to be staying for as long as I can possibly persuade him with every trick I know, sorry about the noise, would you like some toast?  Want me to chew it for you first?_ That parallel comes with a strange little flip in Harry's stomach that he has no intention of thinking about. Eggsy is right, of course, and so Harry just assists him by passing him his shirt and a sock that has somehow found itself under his side of the bed whilst he dresses, and hinders with absent caresses because he can’t resist. Eggsy kisses him, fully on the mouth and then gently, slowly on the cheek as he disentangles himself and backs towards the door.

Harry’s at a bit of a loss for what to do with himself, other than shower, in Eggsy’s immediate absence. This is not his regular protocol for his sexual encounters, however unexpected. Usually he’s quick enough to either follow up with a text or avoid them like a fond aunt with a cold sore at a party, but he cannot do either: he doesn’t have means to contact Eggsy, doesn’t even know his last name and that bothers him less than it might because it would be so absurdly inappropriate to cross that line that it’s best left as it is. Harry alone in his house, freshly showered, his sheets stripped and bed remade so that even now there’s no tangible evidence that Eggsy was ever there.

The guilt comes later. It creeps in like damp until he’s shaking, tingling in the core like he’s about to have a bout of indigestion or a heart attack, seemingly triggered by Charlie coming home a little earlier than he accounted for and this time Harry finds he can’t look him in the eye, has to lock himself in the bathroom and splash cold water on his face. It can’t have been an hour since Eggsy left; they were in far more real danger of discovery than either of them gave credence to without ever knowing it, and although that turned him on at the time he realises plainly now that he’d rather have Eggsy without any of that. To keep for himself, to take out for dinner and kiss on the front step and lie entangled with watching whatever shit happens to pop up when what they were watching ticks over and they’re too comfortable and full of takeaway to move.

 _What the fuck do you think you’re doing?_ Water drips from his nose and he stares himself down in the mirror but nothing is new. The youth in Eggsy’s touches has not miraculously healed him and remade him as a rich, handsome twentyfive year old with the world at their feet. Why would Eggsy ever be interested in him? How dare he even attempt to seduce him when he only knows him because he should be with Charlie?

 _He’s not your son_ The same voice argues back. _He’s a grown man who can make his own mistakes._

His heart is pounding, and he’s _hard_ again. Months of dwindling interest that he wasn’t all that sad about because there wasn’t anything to be done with it anyway, and now he feels like this, alive and alert and aching because of a few stolen kisses, a few heady promises from a boy half his age who’s sleeping with someone else twelve feet down Harry’s own fucking corridor, when he deigns to now that he’s got at least the choice of two.

Would a relationship with him even be viable? Is he wistful over nothing? They may get on famously but Harry’s double his age, closer to retirement than any relatable experiences; a divorced, privately educated middle aged man with all the weird habits and dead pets that come with it. And Eggsy’s a bright young thing, struggling but made for so much, and has never given him any indication that he wants more than the benefit of his experience.  _What did you expect?_

Harry puts his hands flat against the splashback to feel the coolness of the tiles, to steady himself. He’s not even sure why he’s giving Eggsy a second thought, other than basking in the memories of their little encounters for the bit of fun that they are. What does he think? That he’s going to be his boyfriend? That he’s going to give up his no strings encounters with whoever he fancies for a greying one eyed tailor the wrong side of fifty?

But then, surely, if he hadn’t have wanted anything other than that he wouldn’t have let Harry kiss him like that?

 _This isn’t fucking pretty woman._ He kisses Charlie, presumably, and if Eggsy ever did have more significant feelings in his direction they’re dwindling in the face of Harry’s affection. He’s not stupid, he knows how heady and powerful attention is, particularly for someone who’s lacked it, or lacked it from where he wants. Just because he’s susceptible to Harry’s charms doesn’t mean he wants anything more than the sex, though. It’s good, that much is obvious, why question it if it works?

The devil of a fucking thing though, is that now he thinks about it, Harry is not sure he ever _has_ seen Eggsy and Charlie kiss. He’s not caught them snogging like teenagers at a disco, certainly, and that was much to his own surprise for a while, but have they even kissed in greeting or goodbye? In passing, or incidentally? If they have, it’s never been in front of him.

Heart already pounding, Harry changes into his gym clothes, lets himself out and runs until the battery on his FitBit goes flat.

  
  



	7. Seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are! My sincerest thanks to all those who have encouraged me along the way - gods know I needed you or we might never have made it this far. Thank you to all those who have left such lovely comments and kudos. I do hope you enjoy the conclusion.

VII.

 

“Delivery.”

If nothing else, the maelstrom of feelings Harry gets swept up in when he answers the door to Eggsy’s finest cheeky, dimpled grin is enough to confirm he’s in over his head. Somehow he’s comfortable Charlie wouldn’t have been greeted with the same playfulness, for a start, and it’s a relief that he’s there at all after a couple of days of silence, that their poor communication thus far has not yet resulted in him deciding it’s all too much hassle for him to bother with and not coming back.

There’s that, and the swift kick that is the way Eggsy looks: young and bright, short sleeves tight around his muscles and cap barely shadowing his eyes. He’d pass for an actual delivery boy, or a stripogram, and it’s a crying shame he’s there for someone else. Still, he presses as close as he can when he passes Harry and heads for the kitchen, which has got to be a good sign. Harry’s heart lifts, precarious on the wing, buoyed only on the giddy current of foolish bravery because he knows, then, that he has to do something, even if it’s only to passingly inquire as to how they might meet once Charlie has gone. That will result in some sort of answer, for good or ill, and the thought of actually knowing is thrilling in the sort of way that makes Harry feel too hot and sick to the stomach.

“I ain’t kidding, I have actually got food.” He unloads foil trays from a filmy carrier bag inside his rucksack.  “Got enough for three. It can wait, though...” and then, with barely a glance about, he pulls Harry to him for a slow, promising kiss. 

Excitement twists low and sharp through Harry’s belly but he knows he has to keep that under control. Charlie is upstairs, presumably expecting Eggsy, and what Harry has to say can wait out one more tryst, at least. That’s not so say Eggsy’s mouth isn’t hot and beautifully inviting, the sweetners-and-tobacco combination one Harry’s started responding to as though it’s a pleasure in itself, because in some ways it is. 

“I kept wondering of that bruise had come out, on your wrist.” Eggsy is almost holding Harry by the mottled bluish mark which has indeed blossomed on the back of his forearm, looking slyly from it to Harry’s mouth as though inviting his teeth themselves to answer for him. “Been thinking about you wanting to bite me that bad. Kinda wishing you’d done it. Has he asked you about it?”

Harry shakes his head. Despite the bruise being dark, an odd shape and well framed by the casual roll of his shirt sleeve, Charlie has paid it and him no more mind than usual. He doesn’t seem to truly see Harry, even when he seeks out his attention and makes friendly with him normally in order to boast about something or other, and it’s not as though Harry has deliberately worn this badge of his secret right under Charlie’s nose… but he’s not hidden it, either.

“Well, this’ll keep your mouth occupied til… you around later? Like,  _ late _ late?” 

What he has planned isn’t clear, and Harry is too distracted to follow the suggestion. Firstly because his own fantasies, now that he’s got his hands on the delights of Eggsy’s body, have set themselves the less certain goals of things like taking him out to favourite restaurants and bringing down blankets so that they can watch television from the sofa… and getting to watch television on his own sofa in peace seems a distant dream in itself, because god, Harry hadn’t realised quite how much having to share his home is fraying his nerves.

The more immediate distraction is that Eggsy presents him with dinner. Harry can’t make out all of the marker pen scrawl on the paper lids but the one Eggsy sets on the counter in front of him is Four Seasons which, whilst not his actual favourite, is his go-to order whenever he’s eating from anywhere but his regular and there’s no way that’s a coincidence. 

“How did you...?”

“Charlie told me what to bring for him, so I asked him what you have too.” He holds the message up on his phone screen and for a moment Harry wonders why,  because he’s not asked for proof Eggsy isn’t prescient or expressed any disbelief. But then he actually reads the message and sees the expectant look on Eggsy’s face.

“Well. That is just unaccountably rude.”  He’s not sucking up. Harry resists the urge to see if he can make out any of the preceding texts but the second to last message on the incoming side is a truncated set of instructions, devoid humour or affection, for what time Eggsy should come over and what food to pick up on the way. It almost beggars belief, except Harry knows better by now.

“Ain’t it?  And yet here’s me anyway, like some sort of Deliveroo prostitute.”

Harry chuckles, and pulls Eggsy towards him for a quick, appeasing kiss. There’s still no sound of Charlie coming to greet him, so there’s time to offer him this opening gambit of an embrace to make up for the disgustingly poor show from the boy he’s actually here to see. The nerve of it.  Harry’s resolve to bite his tongue and speak to Eggsy when he’s not got someone waiting for him flash boils and evaporates.

“You don’t have to do it, you know? You could just turn him down...” Whether he actually expects Eggsy to simply tell Charlie he’s had a better bid, Harry hasn’t really considered, hoped he wouldn’t ask and doesn’t get time to think about, because Eggsy sighs and it’s the most sincerely put upon breath Harry has ever heard. 

“Yeah, I could. Wouldn’t have an excuse to see you no more then, would I.”

“You hardly need an excuse.” Stepping back, Harry looks him plainly in the eyes and finds more earnestness than the teasing he was expecting. Confusion. The sort of wet and wary tinge that could be hope or sadness or perhaps hasn’t chosen which one to be yet, because it depends. 

Depends on what? Is he simply waiting to be invited? It cannot be that simple, not after all this.

“Eggsy, surely you know that if you were free I’d have snapped you up in a heartbeat. If I weren’t twice your age. And if... .”

“Oh, but you’ll fuck me anyway?” Eggsy wrenches himself away. “That’s typical, ain’t it.”

Harry feels the pressure drop abruptly around his heart but Eggsy’s already out of his arms, far enough away that a touch now would be a grab and Harry remembers to know better, right now, even though every instinct is screaming not to let him go. 

Too many  _ ifs _ , Harry realises, without answers. And the inclusion of the unsolved, unsolvable quandary that is the better part of thirty years between them. How is Eggsy supposed to know he’s decided he doesn’t care enough about that not to want, when Harry keeps not saying what he means? 

“Eggsy, please-“

“Eggsy?”

Harry has never been less pleased to hear Charlie’s voice in his life, and that’s saying something. Eggsy responds to the voice from the stairwell by taking another step back and shaking himself out.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I know what side my bread’s buttered. I’ll see you in a bit.”  He doesn’t look angry so much as sad, which is immeasurably worse, but when Harry’s finished gawping stupidly at Eggsy’s back, trying to speak but knowing he can’t raise his voice enough for Eggsy to hear without alerting Charlie, he realises that’s a damn sight better than if he’d lost his temper and stormed out. As awful as it feels, at least disappointment should mean Harry has a chance. 

Harry consoles himself with his noodles - although his appetite deserts him when it loses its taste three mouthfuls in - and the fact that unless he changes his mind and does another flit out of the window Eggsy will have to pass him to get out of the house. He can wait all night, if he has to. Whether or not the resolution ends in anything more for the pair of them he is at the very least going to say his piece and make sure Eggsy is settled up for the takeaway, because he absolutely doesn’t trust Charlie to have thought about how much money that is on Job Seekers Allowance. Beyond that, well, who knows?

It’s liberating, in a way, to have his hand forced: he no longer has the luxury of simply coasting along presuming Eggsy will be around at some point, or kidding himself that he doesn’t care either way. He’s always cared. He cares so much, and he’s never told him, never let Eggsy know that. Except apparently Eggsy had gleaned enough to gather there was something there despite Harry’s crushing ineptitude, for him to be so put out by what he saw as a rebuff.

_ It’s fixable,  _ Harry tells the panic every time it surfaces, until he believes it. Eggsy has said, after all, that he didn’t plan on putting a stop to it all even if his reasoning was entirely misinformed so Harry should get the opportunity to put it right, when they’ve finished doing whatever they’re doing. That thought has soured considerably, makes Harry’s stomach clench and his throat tighten and he tries to soothe it by thinking how unenthusiastic Eggsy had seemed about Charlie’s company… but that was before Harry had upset him. If he’d had the courage to speak when he wanted to, when he should have done, Eggsy might have gone upstairs for an awkward conversation without stopping to so much as take his shoes off and they could have politely excused themselves… out to a hotel, or something, he has no idea and now may never know because he was too cowardly to speak up. And now Eggsy has gone off to another man’s bed with his nose out of joint, with a point to prove, and if Harry wants to salvage anything from this mess he somehow didn’t see coming, he’s got to swallow his nerves and speak up.

What he’s going to say becomes a separate battle entirely. Understanding that Eggsy may in fact have wanted more than he was getting  _ from Harry  _ the whole time raises more questions than it answers, but the emotional instinct cannot be argued with and Eggsy did definitely indicate that he’d be back for Harry regardless, which he should be too upset to be thrilled by but the thought smolders in the kindling of promise. Its difficult to believe that everything Harry has barely accepted he wants may still simply be a question of logistics if he plays this right. 

If he gets it wrong, though… 

He’s still sitting at the table when he hears feet on the stairs and he’s fully prepared … as fully prepared as he’s ever going to be... for a shirtless and freshly fucked Eggsy to be bringing their cutlery down or fetching water, equally prepared to get an earful or worse have to jump up to stop Eggsy leaving the house before he can get his apology in, because whilst the answer will be what it will, he simply cannot allow this to end on a misunderstanding. It won’t.   _ It will be fine _ . 

Harry has seen enough of Eggsy frustrated, and Eggsy post orgasm, to know which one he’s looking at and if anything he looks in a worse mood than when he went upstairs. It feels horrid to be relieved by that, but Eggsy is not furious and stomping for the door, so Harry doesn’t need to physically intercept. 

True to his word, Eggsy does in fact look more chagrin than angry, almost sorry and more than a little tired. Harry gives him the space to fetch himself a can of lemonade from the fridge before he stands and makes his way towards him, indirectly, like he’s trying not to startle an animal or trip a mine.  _ One false move.... _

“Alright?”

Harry bites back the tide of apology that threatens: there’s no sense frightening the boy off with that sort of outburst if he’s willing to talk.

“I thought you’d settled in for the evening.” Christ, he sounds bitter and jealous… which on reflection is hardly surprising. It won’t matter, soon, with the cards on the table. He’s almost sure that Eggsy already knows he wants him for himself, whatever he might have misunderstood, but if he doesn’t there’s nothing to be done for it now. 

“Nah. Charlie ain’t feeling well so he’s gonna have a hot bath and an early night.” He touches the back of his neck and Harry has a vivid sense memory of kissing that exact spot, though he can’t remember when. “Hope I ain’t caught nothing. He looked alright earlier.”

“Are you feeling well? Are you warm or anything?” Harry clamours close to check, which makes no sense because it’s far too soon for him to show symptoms, though of course depending on incubation periods he could have picked up whatever Charlie is sickening for the last time he came over… which would give Harry himself virtually no chance of avoiding it.  He does feel a touch clammy, now he thinks about it.

Eggsy hops up to sit on the counter and when Harry goes to feel his forehead Eggsy catches his hands to pull him closer.  Thoughts of arguing or distance seem to evaporate for a moment, and instead Harry wonders who cares when Eggsy is ill? Harry would at least be assured of a sarcastic phonecall followed up with a heartfelt care package from work, but who is there to tell Eggsy he’s skiving whilst lovingly plying him with chicken soup and lemsip? 

He doesn’t look like he needs it though, and Harry absolutely accepts the risk of contagion for the feeling of Eggsy softly nuzzling against his chin. It feels like hope. 

“Sorry I got the arse with you earlier.”  So it  _ is _ an olive branch, and Harry almost feels sorry for Charlie if Eggsy has spent the last three quarters of an hour as preoccupied as he has, and he was only trying to eat takeaway. Only almost, though, because Charlie deserves it and Harry is far too busy treasuring the feeling of Eggsy’s breath against his cheek. “Didn’t mean nothing by it, you know? I like this. I’ll take whatever’s going.”

Eggsy pulls Harry into a kiss before he can answer and Harry lets him, because the fact they’re kissing at all means he’ll be heard. Perhaps he even lingers in its soft sensuality, in its comfort, just in case his honesty is going to scare Eggsy right out of the door, never to return. It could be so easy, this. It’s so natural, the way Eggsy’s legs come around his waist, more comfortable than sexy, the whole scene a touch domestic even though nothing is actually any clearer.  _ That  _ Harry will do something about, if it kills him.

“You didn’t let me finish! I think we’re at cross purposes.” Eggsy’s face falls and Harry is already prepared not to stop talking because he just will not allow them to get sucked into another misunderstanding. “No, Eggsy, listen. I’ve been enjoying… what we have, too. But that was never all that was on offer, and I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear. I didn’t really plan for....” -  _ anything that’s happened to me in the last thirty years - “... _ this, and I let myself assume if things weren’t exactly the way you wanted them, you’d have made all the moves.” 

Eggsy’s brow furrows whilst he processes that.  Confusion, challenge, and then realisation: if he had the same mindset, they might have waited forever. It turns into something like resignation then, almost sad, and Harry gathers they’re still not on exactly the same page.  

“Yeah, I get it.” He’s starting to, perhaps, but he looks too unhappy for that to be the revelation Harry wants it to be. “Think I’m mostly pissed off with myself, really. Feel like I’ve… wasted something, you know? Like you might have wanted me if things had been different.”

“I did… I  _ do. _ ”

The wide intrigue on Eggsy’s face is so promising, so hopeful Harry could almost burst into tears or peals of laughter were his heart not in his mouth.

“Still? I mean, I ain’t exactly made myself look good, have I? Sneaking around. I don’t cheat when I’m properly with someone, swear down.”

It’s not a hurdle he’d considered, really. Harry’s feverish, sometimes rose tinted, sometimes distinctly grubby dreams seem to have come off the rails and be barreling ahead and he is absolutely not going to be the one to try to stop them. 

“We’ve none of us behaved well, in honesty, and I hope you won’t think badly of me for how we’ve started off. I’m embarrassed, Eggsy. I’m fifty two fucking years old and I’ve-

“You’re never!”

“I am, I’m afraid.” Something flirts across Eggsy’s face, then, like he’s working out how he’s going to put that one to his friends or his mother or whoever if it comes to it; like he’s surprised; like he’s even maybe a bit turned on. Harry feels a bit of a fraud but it’s not as though Eggsy’s been labouring under the idea he’s thirty or something, he’s never lied . It just is what it is, and out of the tangles they’ve got themselves into it’s probably the least problematic. “But I’d like to think I was above being the other man , or above developing inconvenient feelings for people I can’t have.”

“You could, though.”

Harry looks into Eggsy’s eyes for a long moment, brushing his thumb along the blade of his cheekbone. This. This beautiful boy, this effortless chemistry could be his. Could have been his a lot sooner if he was braver, or might have walked out of his life entirely if they’d kept reading each other wrong, over before they’d even realised what they’d come so close to, what they’d both wanted from opposite sides of the glass.

“Have we both been terribly silly?”

Eggsy answers him with a deep and inviting kiss.

It’s not so much, Harry realises later, that they don’t have time to spring apart and gabble out some sort of ‘ _ this isn’t what it looks like’  _ excuse as that there’s no point trying. Neither of them fucking  _ care. _

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Eggsy pulls back with an exhausted sigh, like the whole thing is an inconvenience. Harry finds himself riveted, lips wet and tingling and still parted, still breathing heavily through the taste of Eggsy’s mouth and looking only at him, almost in wonder as Charlie slams his hands out to brace himself in the doorway. It could be intimidating, but Eggsy has clearly seen worse: he’s unmoved. He rolls his eyes.

“Oh, what’s it fucking look like?” He hops down from the counter but catches Harry’s hand on the way down and intertwines the ends of their fingers. “You’re the one at Cambridge. Work it out.”

Something like a laugh sticks in Charlie’s throat and almost chokes him. He composes himself, then: the posturing in the doorway  _ is _ unbecoming and he tries for cold and spiteful superiority instead. It suits him better, in that it’s quite the ugliest thing Harry’s ever seen.

“You’re fucking Harry behind my back?!”

“And  _ you’re _ a bit overdressed for a bath.”  Oh, indeed, because it’s obvious then: Charlie appears to have made a miraculous recovery; looks not only perfectly well but well turned out in a sports jacket and slacks, freshly shaven.  Eggsy lets go of Harry’s hand and squares up to Charlie, eyes narrowed. “Feeling better, are you? That’s nice. Miraculously cured by the thought of Hugo’s dick?”

Charlie towers over Eggsy by a good head, the same way Harry must do although he’d never approach him like that, but Harry knows Eggsy’s a lot of dense muscle, compact power like a pit bull and his stance is every bit as threatening and biased though he may be, he knows where he’d put his money. Charlie might know it, too, because he reacts only with his face: the derisive, angry curl of his lip as he almost spits the words at him.

“You’re one to talk, you little slut. How long’s this been going on for?” 

“Not long enough.” The dry half-laugh with which he says it almost makes Harry burst out laughing, and then he remembers himself, remembers his outrage, because how dare Charlie speak to Eggsy like that? Fortunately he’s not waiting to be defended, for all the use Harry’s being, struck dumb by surprise and uncertainty as he is.  “What’s it to you, anyway?  Don’t think I don’t know you go off and do what you want, or is that okay because you’re you and I’m supposed to just wait around for when you decide you want me?”

“You think someone like  _ you  _ can do better?”

“Think I fucking have, mate.”

The second’s shocked silence that follows Eggsy’s confidently off-hand rebuttal almost sounds like an end to it, except in desperation Charlie whirls on Harry then. “And  _ you.  _ You’ll be ruined. Chasing around after my scraps, after boys half your age. It’s disgusting. When my dad hears-”

“Oh wind it in, Draco Malfoy.” Eggsy may have his own wounds and upsets but he has nothing for Charlie’s melodrama. Theirs is not the love affair of the century thwarted by a rival and he’s not about to see Charlie suddenly pretend he’s invested in him just because his pride is wounded, and apparently he won’t see Harry slurred in the process either.  “What’re you gonna do? Tell them you’d been shagging some chav on the quiet but couldn’t keep me happy and completely failed to notice when I was banging your stepdad under your nose?”

It’s heating despite his cool delivery, the tone closer to a harsh, bitter whisper than the shouting match they feel like; the gap between them closing and the red fury lighting up Charlie’s face like he’s about to spit but he manages a scoff instead.

“A scarred old has-been who’s spent half his life in the closet? A  _ tailor,  _ close to retiring to a two-up two-down with nothing to show for it all but a divorce and a stuffed dog?”

Every word would be a direct hit if Eggsy weren’t quite so mindblowingly superb on the riposte:

“...and yet that’s what I chose over you.”  Eggsy sucks a hiss through his teeth, shakes his head.. “Ooh, don’t look good on you, does it?”

Charlie opens his mouth and closes it; raises his hand on an accusing point and drops it; fortunately Eggsy continues for him.

“Look, you got two options, yeah? You can be a decent grownup and we all accept we ain’t handled a single thing the way we should’ve and get over it. We’ll keep our your way and you can go out and have a nice night with your mates. Or we can take this outside, ‘cos I ain’t getting blood on Harry’s carpet if that’s how it’s gotta go down.”

Harry does  _ not  _ want to see them come to blows, can’t bear the idea of violence but at the same time has to accept that there’s something incredibly, horribly sexy about Eggsy riled up and ready to fight  _ over him  _ at that, which isn’t at all at odds with the fact he’s wished someone would smack Charlie in the face for some time. He can only imagine how his neighbours would react, after years of nondescript peace, to two young men having a knock down and drag out row outside Harry’s house about their complicated romantic entanglement.

“Or…” Charlie pushes his hair back from his face, straightening his back so that looking down his nose is a natural side effect of his posture. It’d be dignified, had that been his initial reaction, but it’s a bit late. “I can stay in a hotel until I can go home,  and you can have my things sent on to me back at Cambridge”

With that, he turns on his heel and storms out in a manner that suggests to Harry he neither thinks he’s victorious in some manner or that he expects someone to run out after him.

“Or that,” remarks Eggsy blandly at the closed door. 

It _is_ a bit anticlimactic. Harry gets the feeling that whole arrangement may be more complicated and expensive than Eggsy has allowed for but honestly, it’ll be worth it even if Harry ends up footing the bill and he suspects he won’t. There’ll be some terse… or confusing, or outright slanderous or in fact highly comical emailing with his actual parents and then the whole bizarre ordeal will be over. Except Harry is left with a rather wonderous boy standing in his hallway, waiting to know what the merry hell happens next.

“I have absolutely no idea what to say.” He turns to face Eggsy, and it all clicks into place. “Yes, I do. Eggsy, I would like to apologise for all that… unpleasantness, but now we seem to have it over with, would you allow me to take you for dinner? Not tonight, obviously. Tomorrow? ”

Eggsy’s smile spreads halfway across his face before he purses his lips to keep it in check, and quirks an eyebrow. 

“Like a date?”

“No  _ like _ about it. I don’t want to be ambiguous about a thing. I want you to be mine, and mine alone.”  

“Your- ?” 

“Oh for heaven’s sake Eggsy. Your whatever you would like. I’ll get a Facebook account again if that’s what makes it count.” He finds he’s serious, and it skirts him actually having to say _boyfriend_ just in case Eggsy laughs him out of the room but it makes the more important point: that Harry is not ashamed and will happily, proudly introduce Eggsy to anybody and everybody. Will consider him a partner and an equal, and enjoy his company, and certainly make sure he absolutely never has to get a night bus home or comes away from an encounter frustrated.  He does want to furnish Eggsy with a couple of good suits, but that’s more to do with how stunning he’s bound to look in Harry’s expertly chosen fabrics  flawlessly tailored to flatter every gorgeous inch of his frame than because he cares what anyone will think of him in his own clothes.

“That’ll do,” says Eggsy, and bounces up on his tiptoes to seal the agreement with a kiss so rich and easy that it’s hard to believe it’s the first of something new. Harry has to spend a second unscrambling his brain to remember what it was Eggsy was answering, and then the rush of elation floods him so quickly all he can do is kiss Eggsy harder and hope he doesn’t do anything stupid like start crying.

Something new. Something Harry’s never had, really, if this early sincerity is anything to go by and somehow he knows it is; that this promise he’s spent these heady weeks trying not to feel can blossom into something gorgeous now it has the chance. Eggsy pulls back and smiles at him: a big genuine smile that fits into the unknown vacancy between friendliness and flirtation, as though he’s just absently, properly happy, and it’s truly beautiful.

Harry doesn’t doubt there’s chaos to come, or that Charlie will do his best to set tongues wagging and drag Harry’s name through the mud, but however he paints him - homewrecker or gullible old fool - really Harry’s struggling to see quite how badly he can come off looking when Eggsy looks at him quite like that.

Coda.

That Verdi’s  _ Dies Irae _ heralds a call from Harry’s ex wife is probably not as damning as it seems: her choice to unironically announce it as one of her favourite pieces of music at almost exactly the time Harry got his first phone capable of bespoke ringtones had rather sealed that fate for her, and it says something for Phillipa's flare for the dramatic that she’s rather insistently adopted it wherever possible since . 

Still, it’s fitting, because he’s been dreading this call for six days.

Three of those mornings, Harry has woken up trailed along one edge of his bed, displaced by the star shaped spread of Eggsy wearing only sheets and sunlight with his trunks. Harry will buy him some pyjamas at some point, but for now they sleep in as little as is comfortable, all the better for Harry to wake Eggsy by kissing that irresistible line down from between his pectorals, warming and waking him slowly  So that the first noise he makes to greet the day is not a word but a grateful moan from deep in his chest as he puts his hand in Harry’s hair to choose his pace, followed if anything by  _ “you’re gonna spoil me fucking rotten” _ to which Harry does not disagree; doesn’t speak at all until he’s swallowed. 

This morning Eggsy woke him with tea and toast, up bright and early for his first day plastering alongside an Interior designer who happens to be an old friend of Harry’s. Then had come straight back to Harry’s home on the promise of celebratory cocktails somewhere of his choice, though given his proud announcement of his hard earned aches and his need for a massage once he’s had a shower, and his wink on the way into said shower, Harry suspects that the chosen venue may be less than three feet from his own wet bar. 

He just has to weather this conversation first. Pouring a drink might have been an idea. 

“Harry.”

“Good evening, Phillipa”

“Good evening yourself. I’ve got Charlie sobbing in my bathtub.” 

“I can hear him.” And he can absolutely trust Charlie to manage to drag out enough of a fuss to make it through the final few days of his placement; all the way back to Gruyeres and  _ then  _ collapse into a fit of histrionics befitting a Victorian gentlewoman. He’s surprised the boy’s mother believes a moment of it.

“He’s distraught. Says you  _ stole  _ his  _ boyfriend _ , and I can’t actually believe that’s a thing that’s just come out of my mouth. What the fuck is going on?”

Harry thinks he’s got the patience to just set the record straight until he hears the actual concern under Philippa’s confusion. The self important sod has actually managed to manipulate her -  of all people - into believing he’s the wounded party, and Harry’s old enough and tough enough for her to think what she likes of but he just cannot let Eggsy be maligned like that. 

“You may wish to ask Miss Havisham up there at what point… between exploiting Eggsy’s eagerness to please for sex, refusing to be seen in public with him, booting the poor boy out of my house at all hours of the morning and bragging  _ to me of all people  _ about not having to reciprocate sexual favours… he decided Eggsy was in fact his boyfriend.” The rage is still apparently quite raw. He can feel himself getting louder as he loses his grip on tact but can’t really bring himself to care. “He might have told him, because from what I witnessed he was adamant of the total opposite.  _ Not the type,  _ I think were his exact words, but  _ any port in a storm.  _ I’ll spare you the rest.”

The other end of the line is thoughtfully silent for a while. 

“I wish I didn’t believe you.” Thereby making it obvious that she does, with a beleaguered sigh. “His father was much the same.”

The revulsion Harry feels then is a layered and complex thing. 

“I’m very sorry for you. And I did attempt on many occasions to steer Charlie down a more gentlemanly course but he was having none of it, and as much as my own relationship with Eggsy wasn’t orchestrated to give him a taste of his own medicine, he has to live with the consequences of his actions.”

She hums a more cheerful noise of interest into the phone and there’s a crackle as she adjusts her grip on it. The ease with which she lets go of the version of events her son’s presented her with is reassuring, and though he’d have dealt with it Harry must concede he’s pleased she doesn’t seem to be too angry with him.

“You  _ are  _ seeing the boy then?”

“I am.”

“He’s the same age as Charlie!”

“He’s eighteen months younger.” That had been a profoundly uncomfortable revelation and they’re yet to really reach a satisfactory standpoint on the cavernous age gap but it is what it is: at worst an unfortunate fact, at best the exact sort of happy scandal Pippa makes sound so delicious. 

“You’re a horror.” But he thinks she’s laughing. “Ah, good for you. It was probably about time.”

“I’m not sorry about Charlie, but I’m sorry you’re going to have to deal with him.” That’s the truth in its rawest form, and Harry’s glad he got to air it.  “Do you know how you’re going to handle it?”

“Kill him with kindness, probably.” He should know better than to be concerned that she formulates a specific plan for this situation as quickly as she does. Philippa has always been a fan of an intricate and arbitrary con. “Arrange a night in with buckets of ice cream, make him sit through all the Bridget Jones films and the patented All Men Are Bastards rant-“ - Harry has heard the exact one a number of times, it’s an award contender, for sure - “and needle at him until he’s forced to confess that he’s over playing the sympathy card because he’s been a prick so that I’ll stop.”

“Sometimes I remember why I married you.”

“Well, go and remember why you shouldn’t have. Don’t tell me you’ve got a twenty two year old boy lounging about on your chesterfield and you’re talking to me.”

“I have not.” There’s always been the propensity, but rarely the occasion, and Harry wonders how long propriety dictates he must wait between sharing gossip - and pictures - of his conquest with her as an ally. “He’s in the shower.”

“Are my ears burning?”

Harry mouthes  _ Charlie’s mum  _ at Eggsy, who has appeared on the staircase, and Eggsy pulls a shocked face and gestures pulling a zip across his lips, but it’s too late: Pippa is laughing, so he changes the subject. 

“Do pass on my regards to David. How is he?”

“He’s in Bahrain. Oh Christ, he doesn’t even know yet.”

“Is that going to be a particularly difficult conversation?” If she says yes, he’ll know she’s lying: there’s already an unnecessary amount of relish creeping into her tone that she’s only making a token effort to hide under a sort of world weariness, like this is all something she saw coming. In fairness to her, she’s weathered worse. They both have.

“Only if Charlie’s in the house. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to have hysterics and probably send you a bottle of something expensive.”

It had never occurred to Harry but good god, being Charlie’s  _ actual _ stepfather must be a special sort of challenge. 

“Pass him my regards. We must go for a drink when he’s next in the country.”

Pippa snorts so suddenly it reverberates down the phone across the continent.

“I think fucking not, with your track record, you old tart!”

“Now. I shan’t deny he’s a handsome fellow with impeccable taste in tailoring, and in fact spouses…” Eggsy straddles Harry’s lap and Harry’s grateful hands find his hips, edging the top of the towel down until it gives up on the fold and falls. “But the fact remains I love you far too much to steal your husband and I have my hands far, far too full.”

“You mean that literally, don’t you. Ugh, get off the phone. I’ve got to go and deal with all this shit you’ve caused. Lots of love. Mwah.”

And with that she disconnects, leaving Harry’s full attention for the near-naked, soap-soft body under his hands and the plainly amusing gawp on Eggsy’s face.

“I have never been so confused in my fucking life. Your whole family like… whatever it is,” he makes an ambiguously wavy hand gesture “... is a complete mess. It’s like Eastenders.”

Harry refrains from commenting about Eggsy’s own background dysfunction because it’s the less fun sort; the _told-my-mum-but-can’t-bring-you-home_ sort; the occasional  _ ‘you’re a man now’ _ fistfight sort and Harry is only too glad to be providing him with comforts, a little light relief, and to be holding his hand whilst he steps out into the world on his own terms. They can handle a bit of the posh set's drama, and in fact he suspects Eggsy might be as partial to it as he is.

“You just wait until Charlie’s aunt Miranda throws one of her  _ apres ski _ parties. A few gluhweins and it all turns into the Alps edition of Jeremy Kyle. It’ll put our meagre attempt at scandal to shame.”

“I can’t ski.”

It says something about the intensity of the entire social convention that Harry has forgotten to associate the genre of apres ski with the actual sport. 

“I wouldn’t worry, nobody even attempts it most of the time. Have you ever been to Switzerland?”

“I ain’t even got a passport.”

“Well then, we’d better put you an application in.” It’s a surreal conversation to be having whilst kissing a meandering path down the side of Eggsy’s neck, until he remembers why they’re having it.  “I’m not about to miss the opportunity to show you off and get all the painful introductions out of the way at once, and you can bet your life you’ll get a named invite if she’s heard.”

“You’d take me somewhere like that? To meet people, and stuff?”

Harry doesn’t tell Eggsy off for the fact it must be the twentieth time he’s reassured him this week, because he understands how his fears have been founded. After weeks of being ground down by Charlie's callous disinterest and veiled insults, it's no wonder he needs to hear the kindness and Harry has plenty for him, although not all of it needs to be spoken. He just kisses him.

“You know I’d take you anywhere.”

In lieu of the obvious answer - although his eyes do cut to the staircase - Eggsy simply grins.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading. Don't forget, your humble authors live for your comments and kudos (particularly when they've reduced themselves to four hours' sleep with sudden outbursts of creative determination) so please do let me know if you enjoyed it! Tumblr has decided I'm not fit company so you can now find me on twitter - @agentsnakebite . Please do send me a request, I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> Thanks again!


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